Aaron and Brian make some bold predictions for the 2026 Cloud and AI markets, as well as reviewing the biggest issues going into 2026.

SHOW: 989

SHOW TRANSCRIPT: The Cloudcast #989 Transcript

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2026 CLOUD + AI PREDICTIONS (AND BIG ISSUES TO REVIEW)

PREDICTIONS:

At least one big AI IPO in 2026, and it won’t go well. (Aaron says Anthropic)
People will question whether Sam Altman is the right person to lead OpenAI
AI will be a central issue in the 2026 US elections, either about job losses or electricity prices
One major LPU/TPU/dedicated inference chip will break through in 2026
Azure will be the Number One Cloud… (Aaron has to keep it going)
We will start to see a shift in the Enterprise from big models in the sky (1+trillion parameters) to dedicated, purpose-built models of 500M or less in size for efficiency and security
Gemini will dominate the consumer/prosumer space, OpenAI will go through the trough of disillusionment
The industry will shift to a base/instruct and a reasoning split of models
AWS and Azure will double down on being a solutions provider instead of a primitive supplier for AI and infrastructure

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