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.