The 20 Coolest Cloud Infrastructure Companies Of The 2026 Cloud 100
CRN breaks down the 20 hottest cloud infrastructure companies of 2026 paving the AI highway—from AWS, Microsoft and Oracle to CoreWeave, Nutanix and Vultr.
The demand for cloud infrastructure is massive as many of the largest tech companies in the world, from Microsoft and Google to Oracle and IBM, are investing billions in their cloud infrastructure and services to power the AI era.
The cloud infrastructure companies that made CRN’s 20 Coolest Cloud Infrastructure Companies of 2026 list are global leaders in providing the hardware, software and services that are critical to the IT industry—including data centers, servers, storage and networking hardware along with various chipsets and GPUs.
The global enterprise cloud infrastructure services market alone is at a $428 billion annual run rate after generating $107 billion in revenue during the third quarter of 2025, according to data from Synergy Research Group.
Cloud Infrastructure Market In 2026
There are currently around 1,300 data centers worldwide operated by hyperscale providers including AWS, Google and Microsoft. These big three cloud leaders currently account for 58 percent of all hyperscale data center capacity on a global basis.
John Dinsdale, chief analyst and research director at Synergy Research Group, said generative AI is driving cloud infrastructure demand and expansion at a faster pace than ever before.
“Cloud had a transformative impact on the world of IT; generative AI is having an even bigger impact,” Dinsdale said.
Since 2018, the number of operational hyperscale data centers has grown almost threefold, the total amount of operational capacity has grown over fourfold, and the amount of capacity added each quarter has grown fivefold, according to data from Synergy.
Many of the cloud infrastructure market leaders on CRN’s list of the 20 Coolest Cloud Infrastructure Companies of 2026 are following hyperscalers’ lead by investing heavily in expanding infrastructure capacity and availability.
These include cloud infrastructure innovators like CoreWeave, Flexential, Scale Computing and Vultr, as well as familiar faces like Broadcom, Cisco, Dell Technologies, Equinix, HPE, Lenovo and Red Hat.
Here are the 20 cloud infrastructure companies in 2026 that you need to know about.
Amazon Web Services
Matt Garman
CEO
AWS is one of the largest spenders on cloud infrastructure in the world, which powers the $132 billion company’s massive portfolio. The world’s biggest cloud company has invested tens of billions annually in infrastructure in America and abroad in regions such as India and Europe. The company said it planned to spend around $100 billion on infrastructure in 2025 alone with no plans of slowing down in 2026.
Broadcom
Hock Tan
President, CEO
Broadcom is a major provider of critical data center technologies including switches, storage, network adapters, fiber optics, ASICs and for AI workloads. Specifically, the IT giant has invested heavily in its own chips including Thor Ultra and its new Tomahawk 6 chipset, which are designed for AI networking workloads.
Cisco Systems
Chuck Robbins
Chair, CEO
Cisco is a major player in the cloud infrastructure market as the world’s largest networking hardware provider. The company brings together network, security, analytics and management to deliver a portfolio of multi-cloud software, infrastructure, integrated solutions and services for its large customer base. Cisco also provides a slew of edge computing hardware and software targeting AI workloads at the edge.
CoreWeave
Michael Intrator
CEO
CoreWeave is a fast-growing cloud infrastructure firm that provides compute, storage and networking infrastructure services along with its own platforms. The company specializes in cloud GPU infrastructure and building its own chip management software. CoreWeave Mission Control is a unified operating system used to run large-scale AI workloads efficiently and securely on the CoreWeave AI Cloud platform.
Dell Technologies
Michael Dell
Founder, Chairman, CEO
Dell Technologies is a global market leader when it comes to storage, servers, data protection and hybrid cloud infrastructure. The hardware giant is currently at a record $108 billion annual run rate thanks to the massive AI demands in 2025 that needed to be powered by Dell hardware. The Dell Private Cloud is an automated, disaggregated cloud infrastructure platform for scalable private cloud environments.
Equinix
Adaire Fox-Martin
President, CEO
Equinix is one of the top global providers of cloud infrastructure by offering carrier-neutral data centers, colocation and interconnection services. Dubbing itself as the world’s largest data center and colocation provider for enterprise networking and cloud computing, the company operates a network of 270 data centers in 75 major metros around the world.
Flexential
Ryan Mallory
CEO
Flexential provides cloud computing, colocation and connectivity offerings for cloud infrastructure across 18 large markets throughout the U.S. The company’s FlexAnywhere platform is an integrated set of capabilities including colocation, cloud, connectivity, data protection, managed and professional services that deliver tailored IT offerings to boost customers’ business capabilities.
Google Cloud
Thomas Kurian
CEO
The $61 billion AI and cloud computing giant is a major global investor in cloud infrastructure as the third largest cloud company on the planet. Google Cloud is investing tens of billions in expanding its data centers footprint across the world to power its cloud infrastructure and AI innovations. The company’s Google Cloud Platform offers a slew of computing, storage, data analytics and AI innovation.
HPE
Antonio Neri
President, CEO
HPE is a global hardware provider and dominant player in storage, servers, networking and cloud infrastructure. The company posted record revenue of $34 billion in fiscal year 2025. In July, HPE completed its blockbuster $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks to take its networking infrastructure, software and AI to the next level.
IBM
Arvind Krishna
Chairman, CEO
IBM has one of the largest cloud infrastructure portfolios in the world—from software like Watson and Red Hat, to mainframes and AI tools. The company boasts a full-stack cloud platform with over 230 products and services covering AI and IoT to blockchain and containers. The IBM Cloud Infrastructure Center is an OpenStack-compatible software platform for managing the infrastructure of private clouds.
Lenovo
Yuanqing Yang
Chairman, CEO
Lenovo specializes in hybrid and multi-cloud infrastructure with a portfolio of offerings for public cloud, colocation and edge environments. The company offers a slew of servers, storage, workstations and software for various cloud environments. With Lenovo’s ThinkAgile systems offering, the company has formed tight integrated partnerships with Microsoft, VMware and Nutanix for end-to-end cloud infrastructure.
Microsoft
Satya Nadella
Chair, CEO
Microsoft continues to pour billions into new data centers and expanding its cloud infrastructure reach each year to support its growing Azure, Microsoft 365 and Copilot customer base across the globe. The company’s cloud business generated nearly $31 billion in sales during its recent quarter, meaning Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud now has a $123 billion run rate.
Nutanix
Rajiv Ramaswami
President, CEO
Nutanix Cloud Infrastructure is a powerful hyperconverged infrastructure offering to deliver all applications and data at any scale, on any cloud infrastructure. The company owns a host of software innovation around storage, cybersecurity and virtual networking, as well as its Nutanix Kubernetes Platform. The Nutanix Enterprise AI platform enables customers to run interference AI at scale on cloud infrastructure.
Oracle
Clay Magouyrk, Mike Sicilia
Co-CEOs
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is one of the most popular cloud infrastructure offerings in the world that connects applications and data to automation and centralized management. OCI has distributed and sovereign cloud capabilities and is equipped to deliver large-scale AI compute services through its OCI Superclusters. Oracle provides over 200 AI and cloud services at the edge, data centers and across clouds.
Rackspace Technology
Gajen Kandiah
CEO
Rackspace Technology provides cloud infrastructure offerings for public, private, OpenStack and hybrid cloud. Rackspace Private Cloud AI helps harness the power of AI in a secure environment, leveraging a full AI software stack and the latest AI-optimized hardware. The company’s RackConnect Global platform securely networks all of a customer’s premises, data centers and cloud services together into a unified private network.
Red Hat
Matt Hicks
President, CEO
IBM subsidiary Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open-source solutions. With OpenShift as its foundation, Red Hat Cloud Services includes hosted and managed platform, application and data services that streamline the hybrid cloud experience—aimed at reducing operational cost and complexity of cloud-native applications. The company is the owner of the highly popular Linux operating system.
Scale Computing
Jeff Ready
CEO
Scale Computing specializes in providing edge computing-focused hybrid cloud infrastructure via its SC//Platform that combines storage, servers and virtualization. The company’s self-healing platform for autonomously running applications lets customers run apps at the edge or data center with automation and high availability that seeks to bridge on-premises infrastructure needs with public clouds.
TierPoint
Jerry Kent
Chairman, CEO
TierPoint is a top-notch data center and cloud infrastructure provider with around 40 data centers in America. The company’s data centers deliver carrier-neutral connectivity and connections to cloud providers, while also offering colocation, disaster recovery and managed hosting or cloud services. In 2025, TierPoint secured $500 million in financing to support ongoing data center expansion.
Vultr
J.J. Kardwell
CEO
Vultr is a cloud infrastructure specialist aiming to make high-performance computing more affordable and locally accessible. The company provides cloud storage, compute, networking, serverless and cloud GPUs from Nvidia and AMD. Vultr’s composable cloud stack and interoperability allow for easy integration into hybrid cloud and multi-cloud architectures. Customers can also leverage the Vultr Marketplace to find tailored tools, applications and solutions.
Zadara
Yoram Novick
CEO
Zadara provides edge cloud services including a cloud platform that offers managed compute, storage and network systems within a global point-of-presence network. The company’s zCompute platform features a consumption-based pricing model with zero data egress fees, which lets clients develop, deploy, run and virtualized any application. With over 500 edge cloud locations worldwide, Zadara is also equipped to meet the requirements of sovereign AI workloads.