Liftr Insights reports strong AI growth in Q4 cloud services, signaling accelerating demand for cloud infrastructure.

Liftr Insights, a market intelligence company, has released data showing strong growth of AI in the cloud. The quarter is not yet over, but the data already reveals significant expansion in Q4. The number of unique AI instance types has increased 11.3% over the last three months, with the bulk of this growth beginning in the second half of September 2024.

AI accelerator pricing has also risen substantially. The recent average price per AI accelerator core was $2.75, up from a low point of $2.30 at the end of 2023, and represents the highest point since the end of 2020 according to Liftr Insights' half a decade of historical records. According to Tab Schadt, CEO of Liftr Insights, "We work with corporate clients to find the right type of data to enable them to make and support financial decisions. They need to know about comparative offerings, global availability, and, of course, prices to improve their bottom lines."

While the bulk of instances are based on NVIDIA, Liftr Insights data expose the presence AMD has begun making with its MI300X in specific regions of the globe. Liftr customers also see instances by Intel and Qualcomm as well as home-grown AI instances by AWS and Google. "Smart analysts leverage objective data about AI," says Schadt. "Liftr Insights offers the precise intelligence they need."

The data also show where growth is happening geographically. For example, the number of types of AI instances has increased by 9.1% in Africa since the end of 2023, and the price per AI GPU has increased from $2.39 to $3.18 throughout that period. This is significantly higher than the rates closer to $2.00 only a few years prior.

Schadt emphasizes the value of reliable market intelligence, stating: "Corporations making financial decisions about AI infrastructure seek this type of information. They want reliable, objective sources to finalize their budgets and forecasts. They only wish they had Liftr Insights data sooner." Liftr Insights tracks companies including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud, Oracle Cloud, Tencent Cloud, CoreWeave, Lambda, and Vultr, as well as semiconductor vendors AMD, Ampere, Intel, Qualcomm, and NVIDIA.