AI is making the public cloud grow like crazy again. In the first quarter, the industry recorded the strongest growth since 2022. AWS remains the largest provider, but Microsoft is getting closer.

2024 looks to be another bad year for the public cloud. Synergy Research Group estimates that investments in cloud infrastructure (IaaS, PaaS, Hosted Private Cloud) amounted to $76 billion. That’s thirteen billion dollars more than in the first quarter of 2023, or a growth of 21 percent.

Since 2022, the public cloud has recorded quarterly growth of more than twenty percent. Not that the cloud had a quiet year in 2023, on the contrary, but the growth rates remained stable at around fifteen percent.

The current AI hype is driving growth rates up again, with analysts noting that the explosive growth of thirty to forty percent per quarter is no longer realistic before 2022 because the public cloud has simply become too big. Nevertheless, Synergy Research Group expects the size of the cloud to double in the next four years.

AWS feels the hot breath of Microsoft

The accelerated growth appears to be particularly helping the “Big Three” of the cloud industry. The triumvirate of AWS, Microsoft and Google is consolidating its hold on the market: 67 percent of all cloud spending ends up in their bank accounts. AWS remains the largest with 31 percent, but its dominance is becoming less and less pronounced.

Microsoft and Google seem to be better able to cope with the AI ​​hype. Microsoft in particular is catching up with AWS quarter after quarter and now has a market share of 25 percent. Google Cloud is around eleven percent and has also been profitable for several quarters.