Enterprises across Asia Pacific and Japan are repatriating workloads from public to private cloud at a faster pace than the rest of the world, as AI moves from pilot projects into full production, according to Broadcom‘s Private Cloud Outlook 2026 report.

The report found that 82 per cent of organisations in APJ have considered moving workloads from public to private cloud, with 54 per cent having already repatriated some workloads — both figures ahead of the global average. Globally, 56 per cent of enterprises are running or planning to run production AI inferencing on private cloud, while public cloud’s share of the same workloads dropped 15 percentage points year-on-year, from 56 per cent to 41 per cent.

APJ at an AI tipping point

The shift in APJ is being driven by security and compliance, infrastructure cost predictability, and performance concerns, the report said. Globally, the biggest new demands AI is placing on enterprise IT are data protection and privacy (37 per cent) and security and control (36 per cent).

Across Asia Pacific and Japan, organisations are moving beyond AI experimentation and focusing on production deployment. As AI workloads scale, enterprises are prioritising security, cost predictability, performance and operational control, factors that are accelerating the shift towards private cloud. With 82% organisations in Asia Pacific and Japan considering workload repatriation to private cloud, this marks a turning point in how organisations are thinking about AI infrastructure, said Sylvain Cazard, President, Asia Pacific, Japan & Middle East, Broadcom.

Public cloud costs under scrutiny

Cost has overtaken security as the top public cloud concern globally, rising from 26 per cent in 2025 to 31 per cent in 2026. Some 97 per cent of IT leaders believe a portion of their public cloud spend is wasted, and 52 per cent estimate that waste exceeds 25 per cent of their total public cloud budget.

Globally, 83 per cent of enterprises are considering repatriation of workloads from public to private cloud, and 50 per cent have already done so. The top three drivers of repatriation are security and compliance (51 per cent), cost predictability (39 per cent) and performance (39 per cent).

Geopolitics and data sovereignty rising

Four out of five IT leaders say geopolitics is now affecting their IT strategy and operations. For the first time, data sovereignty and residency requirements (54 per cent) have overtaken jurisdiction-specific compliance (51 per cent) as the leading geopolitical factor shaping infrastructure decisions. Industries with high compliance requirements — financial services, public sector, healthcare and life sciences — are at the leading edge of this shift.

Private cloud investment intent is growing at twice the rate of public cloud, up 21 points versus 10 points over a three-year outlook. Some 58 per cent of IT leaders now name building new workloads on private cloud as a top priority, up from 53 per cent a year ago.

The Private Cloud Outlook 2026 is based on a global survey of 1,800 senior IT decision-makers at enterprises with 1,000 or more employees across eight countries in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, conducted by Radius Tech in partnership with Broadcom between February and March 2026.