Enterprises Are Quietly Moving Their AI Back On-Premises. Here Is Why.

42% of companies are considering moving workloads off the cloud. For AI infrastructure specifically, the reasons are more urgent than cost.

The Trend Nobody Expected

The story of the last decade was clear: everything moves to the cloud. On-premises infrastructure was expensive, inflexible, and the province of companies too slow to modernise.

Then 2025 happened.

42% of companies are now considering moving workloads back on-premises to escape vendor dependencies. 57% of IT leaders say they feel the need to run infrastructure within a single country, driven by data sovereignty requirements. Microsoft launched Sovereign Cloud capabilities in February 2026 specifically for AI models running fully disconnected from public cloud.