For the last several quarters we’ve seen a lull in the expansion of the cloud infrastructure market, with lower growth numbers than we’ve been accustomed to seeing in the past. That changed this quarter thanks in large part to interest in generative AI. The new revenue wave began just last year, driven by the ChatGPT hype cycle, but has already pushed cloud infra revenue in the fourth quarter of 2023 to $74 billion, up $12 billion over last year at this time and $5.6 billion over Q3, the largest quarter-over-quarter increase the cloud market has experienced, per Synergy Research.

The cloud infrastructure market for the entire year grew to an eye popping $270 billion, up from $212 billion in 2022. Synergy’s John Dinsdale predicts that the growth we saw in the last year is here to stay, even as the market continues to mature and the law of large numbers takes increasing effect. “Cloud is now a massive market and it takes a lot to move the needle, but AI has done just that. Looking ahead, the law of large numbers means that the cloud market will never return to the growth rates seen prior to 2022, but Synergy does forecast that growth rates will now stabilize, resulting in huge ongoing annual increases in cloud spending,” he said in a statement.