Research firm International Data Corp. (IDC) said AI-native cloud providers are changing how enterprises in Asia-Pacific (APAC) build and run Generative AI (GenAI) systems, as demand shifts toward infrastructure designed specifically for AI workloads.
In its new report, IDC said global investment in AI inference infrastructure is expected to surpass spending on training infrastructure by the end of 2025. The trend points to the growing importance of AI-native cloud providers in enabling enterprise-grade GenAI.
“The rise of GenAI and AI agents is transforming a once-linear stack into a dynamic ecosystem, reshaping infrastructure demand and redefining roles across the tech landscape,” said Deepika Giri, head of research, Asia Pacific, IDC. “AI-native cloud providers are emerging as essential partners for enterprises seeking to operationalize GenAI.”
IDC’s latest data show that GenAI adoption in the region is gaining momentum. About 25% of enterprises have already moved, or are planning to move, AI and data workloads to sovereign clouds. By 2025, 65% of organizations are expected to run more than 50 GenAI use cases in production, while 26% are projected to exceed 100 use cases.
The shift is driving enterprises to focus on GPU-first, low-latency, and compliance-ready cloud platforms that meet both performance and regulatory requirements.
IDC noted that several specialized AI-native cloud providers are helping define this market segment. GMI Cloud, an NVIDIA Reference Platform Partner in Asia-Pacific, offers access to the latest GPU architectures and a proprietary AI Inference Engine designed for low latency and scalable performance while supporting sovereign cloud compliance. CoreWeave provides GPU-as-a-Service for large model workloads. Nebius focuses on domain-specific deployments with advanced GPU clusters, while Lambda Labs delivers GPU-intensive services optimized for energy efficiency.
IDC said these providers illustrate how AI-native clouds are bridging the gap between raw compute and enterprise deployment, helping businesses across Asia-Pacific innovate securely and at scale.