Spending on cloud infrastructure services in Mainland China grew some 26 percent Year-on-Year in Q4 2025.

According to research by Omdia, spending reached $14.7 billion and marked the third consecutive quarter where growth was more than 20 percent. The technology research and advisory group is expected to see similar levels of growth throughout 2026.

Omdia defines cloud infrastructure services as including bare metal as a service, infrastructure as a service, platform as a service, container as a service, and serverless offerings hosted by third-party providers.

According to the firm, the main driver of this growth was AI, but has also been pushed by broader "cloud infrastructure consumption and enterprise deployment capabilities."

“This reflects a broader shift in the role of AI, from a standalone technical capability into a wider driver of infrastructure demand,” said Rachel Brindley, senior research director at Omdia. “As enterprises embed AI across a wider range of real-world business scenarios, deployment models, data environments, and operational frameworks are becoming increasingly complex. As a result, demand for cloud resources is extending beyond model consumption to the broader infrastructure layer.”

Omdia also noted that AI commercialization has been moving beyond chatbot applications to AI agents, which has contributed to increasing cloud spend. Yi Zhang, senior analyst at Omdia, said of the market: “It is moving beyond models and platform capabilities alone toward the deliverability and operational maturity of agent products, as well as the depth of their integration with real-world business scenarios.”

As a result of these AI solutions, Omdia is expecting that partner-driven cloud revenue will grow, with the quarter already seeing 25 percent of revenue made up from this.

In terms of the providers winning the cloud race, Alibaba held 37 percent of the market in Q4 2025, with Huawei falling in second place with a 17 percent market share. Tencent Cloud, meanwhile, held a 10 percent share in the quarter.

While not noted in Omdia's analysis, reports earlier this year suggest ByteDance is also pushing to get a bigger slice of the cloud pie. At the time, IDC estimated that ByteDance's Volcano Engine held around a 13 percent market share.