AI will heavily influence cloud-related decisions in 2026
AI is set to become a defining force in shaping cloud-related decisions and strategies for 2026. See what the experts are saying about multi-cloud, neoclouds, data sovereignty and serverless.
The rapid adoption of hybrid and multi-cloud models, coupled with the rise of AI-native and neocloud environments, is transforming how businesses approach cloud computing.
Cloud computing remains a go-to environment for businesses, with spending still rising. According to Synergy Research Group, quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues -- including IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud services -- were $106.9 billion, with trailing twelve-month revenues reaching $390 billion.
"The use of public cloud services has been ubiquitous for years now, with nearly every industry leveraging public cloud services to a significant degree. The need to keep pace in the AI era is fueling investment everywhere," said Scott Sinclair, practice director at Omdia.
Varun Raj, a cloud and AI engineering executive, expects cloud growth in 2026 will be driven more by AI workload consumption than by large migration programs.
The cloud ecosystem is evolving to meet the demands of the AI era. This article explores five key trends for 2026:
Hybrid and multi-cloud strategies will continue to rise.
AI-native cloud and neocloud create a new evolution of cloud computing.
Data sovereignty concerns will drive more private cloud use.
Hybrid serverless strategies will be the go-to for agentic AI.
Upskilling will be key to closing the cloud skills gap.
Hybrid and multi-cloud strategies will continue to rise
Hybrid and multi-cloud are becoming the dominant deployment models and will remain a popular option. According to the 2025 State of the Cloud Report from Flexera, 86% of respondents are using a multi-cloud strategy, in which users either use a private cloud, multiple public clouds, or at least one public and one private cloud.
Hybrid and multi-cloud architectures are firmly established by 2026 as intentional long-term operating models, not transitional phases.
Varun Raja cloud and AI engineering executive.
"Hybrid and multi-cloud architectures are firmly established by 2026 as intentional long-term operating models, not transitional phases," said Raj. However, he notes that success does depend on standardized IAM, networking observability and governance across clouds -- not optimization for a single provider.
Hybrid and multi-cloud growth is partly due to the rise of AI and its implications for enterprise data. Businesses require greater control and visibility across their environments, especially as data locality and sovereignty become increasingly important.
"The agility of both infrastructure and data is becoming increasingly important. The ability to quickly scale infrastructure in the right location, or the ability to move data quickly to the optimal infrastructure, will be critical elements in the strategies behind the acquisition and architecture of hybrid and multi-cloud environments moving forward," said Sinclair.
AI-native cloud and neocloud create a new evolution of cloud computing
An AI-native cloud is an environment specifically designed and optimized to support AI workloads and applications. Traditional cloud platforms are known for general-purpose computing, but this new iteration of cloud is a better fit for the unique demands of AI, such as high-performance computing, large-scale data processing and advanced machine learning model training and deployment.
"In 2026, most new cloud applications will be AI-native by default, designed around models, agents, orchestration layers and continuous evaluation. Analyst guidance shows managed AI and data services growing materially faster than general-purpose compute, reflecting this shift," said Raj.
With the rise of AI-native cloud, neocloud has also taken its place in the new era of cloud computing. While it is similar to AI-native clouds in that it meets the demands of AI, it takes it a step further to address industry-specific needs and regulatory challenges.
In 2026, we will see the AI-focused neoclouds capture new business alongside the hyperscaler cloud providers, who will counter with AI innovations around agentic capabilities.
Lee Sustara principal analyst at Forrester.
"In 2026, we will see the AI-focused neoclouds capture new business alongside the hyperscaler cloud providers, who will counter with AI innovations around agentic capabilities…. The transition to the AI-native cloud will be bumpy as commodity cloud infrastructure comes under strain," said Lee Sustar, a principal analyst at Forrester.
Still, hyperscalers are in the AI game as they increase their AI capabilities and hardware. "Custom AI chips such as Google's TPUs and Amazon's Trainium are expected to capture a growing share of AI workloads, potentially forcing NVIDIA to diversify its product portfolio further to maintain its market leadership," said Larry Carvalho, principal consultant at RobustCloud.
Data sovereignty concerns will drive more private cloud use
As data becomes a critical asset for businesses, governments and individuals, the debate around who controls it and how it is governed has intensified. Data sovereignty has become a hot topic, alongside increasing concerns about privacy and security. These concerns have reinvigorated the topic of private cloud.
"As investments in AI ramp up in 2026, concerns about data sovereignty as well as those about the overall cost of cloud services are going to play a larger role in the decision to deploy new initiatives in the public cloud, or to leverage on-premises private or sovereign cloud options. While public cloud services will continue to be a strong option, fewer organizations will identify themselves as cloud-first, choosing to evaluate multiple options prior to deployment," said Sinclair.
According to Forrester's predictions, hyperscalers will launch sovereign clouds in 2026 -- AWS already announced the general availability of the AWS European Sovereign Cloud on January 15th. However, 60% of enterprises in regulated industries will prefer private cloud or data-center-based sovereign options instead. As a result, Forrester expects private cloud revenue growth to double year-over-year from approximately 13% to nearly 25%.
"Governments and businesses will build guardrails around AI for sovereignty and privacy, making a significant impact on where and how they invest in cloud technology," said Sustar.
Another trend closely related to sovereignty is geopatriation, in which a business relocates its data from global cloud hyperscalers to regional alternatives within the geographic boundaries of a specific country or jurisdiction due to geopolitical uncertainty.
"Geopatriation is an extension of a previous trend called 'nationalism versus globalism," said Jeffrey Hewitt, a vice president analyst at Gartner, at Gartner's IT Infrastructure, Operations & Cloud Strategies Conference in December 2025. "Arguably, it goes beyond cloud from just data sovereignty to operational sovereignty to technical sovereignty. Geopatriation empowers I&O to reduce geopolitical risks and address specific sovereignty requirements."
Hybrid serverless strategies will be the go-to for agentic AI
AI agents, which are autonomous systems capable of performing tasks, learning and adapting, benefit greatly from the features of serverless architectures.
Serverless will become the default for AI agents, with 80% adopting hybrid models, according to Forrester's "Predictions 2026: Cloud Computing" report. Function-as-a-service options will work best for stateless agents and lightweight workflows, while serverless containers will be used for long-running, stateful agentic processes
Top cloud providers already embedded serverless architecture into their offerings, such as Amazon Bedrock Agents, Vertex AI Agent Builder and Azure AI Foundry. Forrester predicts that these agentic AI capabilities in popular offerings will attract more customers through pay-per-execution pricing, instant updates and high availability.
"AI agent capabilities offered directly by hyperscalers are likely to intensify competitive pressure on enterprise software vendors such as Salesforce and ServiceNow," said Carvalho.
Upskilling will be key to closing the cloud skills gap
Businesses must not overlook their IT staff, as they are an important investment in how well your company can implement and use emerging technologies. Upskilling is expected to take center stage again as 89% of organizations say hiring is more expensive than upskilling for IT roles, according to Pluralsight's 2025 Tech Skills Report.
"IT departments have accumulated large cloud skills debts over the past 15 years. This debt has accrued because end users and IT departments, swamped with their own projects, opted to let most clouds run on their own, and they depended on cloud vendors to do cloud asset management. This laissez-faire approach doesn't work anymore because too many mission-critical systems, including AI, are moving to the cloud," said Mary E. Shacklett, president of Transworld Data, a technology analytics, market research and consulting firm.
Shacklett expects 2026 to be a year of internal IT upskilling on cloud tools that enable on-premises data center level management of cloud-based resources. For IT staff, this means learning and using an assortment of vendor-specific IT management and security tools.
"In IT, we have seen a trend toward more generalist positions for several years now; the rise of AI is increasing the need for superior control over data governance, movement and security. As a result, organizations will likely require increased experience in how to design and manage infrastructure to best enable the control of data," said Sinclair.
Kathleen Casey is the site editor for SearchCloudComputing. She plans and oversees the site, and covers various cloud subjects including infrastructure management, development and security.
