Gartner forecasts that India’s end-user public cloud spending will grow sharply, reaching about $17.5 billion in 2026 (with one report citing it as surpassing $17 billion). The research attributes the expansion to strong enterprise demand for infrastructure and services that can support AI workloads. Gartner also points to ongoing efforts to modernise applications and move toward more scalable IT operating models, which it says are driving the next phase of cloud adoption in India.
Beyond near-term spending, Gartner highlights changes in how enterprises use cloud services for AI. By 2030, it expects that more than 60% of enterprises will carry out intensive AI model activity in one cloud environment while using their data in another. This pattern represents a shift from today, when fewer than 10% of enterprises operate in this “separate compute and data” style.
Together, the reports present a consistent outlook: public cloud investment in India accelerates toward the mid-to-high $17 billion range in 2026, alongside evolving AI deployment strategies that increase cross-cloud and multi-cloud practices.
