Cloud and Enterprise

General-purpose computing · Web, SaaS, ERP, databases · Flagship: AWS us-east-1, Northern Virginia

General-purpose cloud is still the largest data center business, and AI is speeding it up. Cloud infrastructure revenue grew 43% to $143.4 billion in Q2 2026, the fastest in eight years, and about half of the CPU compute at the largest providers now runs on Arm chips.

Cloud infrastructure services, second quarter 2026: $143.4 billion, up 43%, with AWS 28%, Microsoft 20%, Google 15% and others 37%; and year-over-year growth by provider, from AWS at 37% to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure at 93% CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE SHARE, Q2 2026 ($143.4B, SYNERGY) AWS 28% Microsoft 20% Google 15% Everyone else 37% REVENUE GROWTH, LATEST QUARTER, YEAR OVER YEAR 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% Oracle OCI$5.8B quarter 93% Google Cloud$24.8B 82% Alibaba Cloud$7.1B 45% Microsoft Azure$100B+ a year 43% AWS$42.2B 37% Whole market$143.4B 43%
Q2 2026 market
$143.4B
Growth
43%
AWS share
28%
Arm share, top clouds
~50%
Hub
Workloads

What it is

The General-Purpose Work Every Data Center Runs

Cloud and enterprise workloads are the everyday software of business and the web: websites, SaaS apps, ERP and payroll, databases, email and virtual machines. They run on general-purpose servers built around CPUs, not GPUs, at 10 to 20 kW a rack.

  • Growth: cloud infrastructure services reached $143.4 billion in Q2 2026, up 43%, the fastest growth in eight years; the market has doubled in 11 quarters (Synergy Research).
  • AI's pull: generative AI cloud services grew 165%. Nine neoclouds, including CoreWeave, Crusoe and Nebius, are now among the 40 largest providers.
  • Servers: TrendForce expects total server shipments to grow about 13% in 2026, against about 28% for AI servers, with CPU and circuit board lead times near a year.

Flagship

AWS us-east-1 in Northern Virginia

  • History: AWS's first region, opened in 2006, and its largest, with six availability zones. AWS does not disclose its megawatts or building count.
  • Outages: a DNS and DynamoDB failure in October 2025 caused a roughly 15-hour global outage. A thermal incident cut power to one availability zone in May 2026.
  • Growth: AWS is extending the region into Maryland at Quantum Frederick.
  • Market: Northern Virginia has about 4,500 MW of colocation in operation at 0.2% vacancy (CBRE). See Colocation Data Centers.

Processors

Arm Is Taking Over Cloud CPUs

  • Arm: Arm says about half of CPU compute at the largest cloud providers now runs on Arm chips, up from about 15% to 18% in mid-2024. Examples are AWS Graviton, Microsoft Cobalt and Google Axion.
  • x86: AMD reached 34.5% of server CPU shipments in Q2 2026 against Intel's 65.5% (Mercury Research).
  • Where they are made: Graviton, Cobalt, Axion and AMD EPYC are made by TSMC, mostly in Taiwan, with TSMC Arizona ramping; Intel Xeon is the main US-made server CPU.

VMware

Broadcom's VMware Prices Are Pushing Workloads Out

In a January 2026 CloudBolt survey of 302 large North American companies, 59% saw VMware costs rise more than 25% after Broadcom's takeover, and 86% are shrinking their VMware use. Only 4% have finished moving; most departing workloads go to public cloud. CloudBolt sells VMware alternatives.

Providers

Cloud Providers

Cloud infrastructure providers, latest reported quarter
ProviderRevenueGrowthShareNotes
AWS$42.2B (Q2 2026)37%28% worldwideGraviton Arm CPUs; 98% of top 1,000 EC2 customers use them
Microsoft Azure$100B+ a year43%20%$678B commercial backlog; Cobalt Arm CPUs
Google Cloud$24.8B (Q2 2026)82%15%$514B backlog; Axion Arm CPUs; TPU sales
Oracle OCI$5.8B (fiscal Q4 2026)93%Tier two$638B backlog
Alibaba Cloud$7.1B (Aug 2026)45%37% of ChinaAI revenue up triple digits 12 quarters running
Huawei Cloudn/a14% (Q3 2025)17% of China
Tencent Cloudn/an/a10% of China

Record

Dataset Record

Dataset
Cloud market share, provider results and server CPU trends
Sources
Synergy Research Q2 2026, company earnings, Omdia, Mercury Research, Arm, TrendForce, CloudBolt, AWS, CBRE
Last verified
October 2026