Broadcom's (AVGO) Private Cloud outlook for 2026 reveals an AI tipping point as production inference shifts decisively to private cloud

The AI experimentation phase is over, and the private cloud is where enterprise AI workloads are being deployed for security and scale. Key findings from the report include: 56% of enterprises are running or planning to run production AI inferencing on private cloud, while public cloud use for the same workloads dropped 15 percentage points year over year — from 56% to 41%; The biggest new demands being placed on enterprise IT by AI are data protection and privacy (37%) and security and control (36%); For the first time, cost has overtaken security as the number one public cloud concern, rising from 26% in 2025 to 31% in 2026; 97% of IT leaders believe some of their public cloud spend is wasted, and 52% estimate that waste exceeds 25% of their total public cloud budget; 83% of enterprises are considering the repatriation of workloads from public to private cloud, and 50% have already done so —with cost predictability now jumping to second biggest driver for repatriation, cited by 39% of organizations; Four out of five IT leaders say geopolitics are now affecting their IT strategy and operations, and for the first time, data sovereignty and residency requirements (54%) have overtaken jurisdiction-specific compliance (51%) as the leading geopolitical factor shaping infrastructure decisions.