The total global expenditure on cloud infrastructure services reached $95.3 billion in Q2 2025, representing a year-over-year growth of 22%, according to the latest data from Canalys (part of Omdia). This marks the fourth consecutive quarter in which the market maintains a growth rate above 20%, solidifying cloud computing as an essential element of digital transformation and increasingly, of artificial intelligence (AI) development.
AI Fuels Cloud Demand
The robust growth is driven by three main factors:
- AI consumption, which demands significant computing power for model training.
- The resurgence of legacy system migrations to cloud environments.
- The consolidation of digital-native companies expanding their scale by leveraging cloud elasticity.
The consultancy notes that an increasing number of organizations are adopting a multi-model approach, that is, the ability to switch between different AI models based on business needs, costs, and specific use cases.
AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud: A Concentrated Market
The three major global providers — AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud — account for 65% of worldwide cloud infrastructure expenditure, with a combined year-over-year growth of 27%.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS): maintains its leadership with a 32% market share and 17% YoY growth. Its order backlog reached $195 billion, up 25% from the previous year. AWS has launched new services for deploying AI agents and integrated models such as Claude Opus 4.1 (Anthropic) and GPT-oss (OpenAI).
- Microsoft Azure: experiences the strongest surge, with a 39% YoY growth and a 22% market share. Its Azure AI Foundry platform now serves over 14,000 clients building intelligent agents, and in the latest quarter, it integrated the OpenAI GPT-5 model. Microsoft operates more than 400 data centers across 70+ regions.
- Google Cloud: holds an 11% market share after growing 34% YoY. Its order backlog increased to $108.2 billion, up from $92.4 billion in the previous quarter. Its Gemini 2.5 model family now surpasses 450 million monthly active users, with a 50% increase in daily request volume.
Record Investments in Infrastructure
The AI race has prompted major providers to increase their capital budgets:
- AWS will surpass $100 billion in investment in 2025.
- Microsoft plans around $80 billion in the current fiscal year.
- Google has raised its investment forecast for 2025 to $85 billion, up from the initially planned $75 billion.
This growth responds to the need for greater computing capacity, increased energy availability, and geographic expansion, as demand begins to face resource constraints such as semiconductor shortages and electrical supply issues in some regions.
Coopetition: Competition and Collaboration in the AI Era
One of the most notable phenomena is the so-called “coopetition”. Although major players compete in advancing models and services, they also collaborate on capacity and distribution:
- AWS Bedrock adds third-party models like Claude or GPT.
- OpenAI has integrated Google Cloud into its computing network to train and deploy models.
- Meta, DeepSeek, and OpenAI are moving toward releasing open weights, reinforcing the role of open source in downstream innovation.
This balance between competition and collaboration aims to meet the rapidly increasing demand for AI, while expanding the availability of accessible models across sectors such as banking, healthcare, logistics, and the creative industry.
Conclusion: Cloud as the Backbone of AI
The data from Q2 2025 confirms that cloud infrastructure is now inseparable from AI advancement. Without these resources, training, deployment, and scaling increasingly complex and resource-demanding models would be unfeasible.
The challenge now is not just growth, but doing so with sustainability and resilience, in a context marked by energy limitations, supply chain tensions, and growing demands for transparency in AI usage.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What was the total global cloud infrastructure expenditure in Q2 2025?
It reached $95.3 billion, a 22% increase from 2024.
Which providers lead the cloud market in 2025?
AWS (32%), Microsoft Azure (22%), and Google Cloud (11%) account for 65% of worldwide spending.
Why is cloud investment growing so rapidly?
Primarily due to AI consumption, legacy system migrations, and the expansion of digital-native companies.
What is “coopetition” in the cloud and AI sectors?
It refers to the combination of competition and collaboration among major providers, who compete in models and services but share capacity and infrastructure to meet the rising AI demand.