Santa Cruz, CA, February 22, 2025 — A new analysis from the Evans Data Corporation’s Worldwide Developer Population & Demographic Study 24.2 reveals that cloud infrastructure is the most commonly used environment for AI and machine learning (ML) projects, with nearly 9.7 million developers worldwide deploying their AI workloads in the Cloud. This makes cloud computing the top choice for AI development, surpassing on-premises servers, data centers, and edge computing.
“The cloud has become the backbone of AI development, offering the scalability and processing power necessary for complex machine learning models,” said James Owen, Director of Research at Evans Data Corporation. “However, strong adoption of on-premises and data center solutions highlights that developers continue to weigh factors like security, latency, and infrastructure control in their deployment decisions.”
Asia-Pacific (APAC) are strong adopters of AI and this extends to AI cloud adoption. Roughly twice as many developers in APAC run projects in the Cloud compared Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA), although APAC’s developers are also more likely than those in EMEA to develop AI projects, in general. APAC and EMEA demonstrate strong cloud adoption, though on-premises servers and data centers remain highly utilized in these regions. North America and Latin America each show strong cloud AI adoption as a proportion of their total developer populations with more than half of the AI developers in each region leveraging the Cloud for their AI workloads.
As AI adoption continues to accelerate, understanding where developers are running their projects is crucial for cloud providers, enterprises, and technology decision-makers looking to align their infrastructure strategies with industry trends.