AI’s Next Frontier: Why Inferencing at the Edge Could Reshape the Industry | Utilizing AI Episode 31

A consensus emerged over the last few years that AI compute would be centralized in massive datacenters, but this is being challenged as the industry evolves in 2026. This episode of Utilizing AI focuses on the transition from training to inferencing and datacenters to the edge, featuring Futurum Research Directors Olivier Blanchard and Guy Currier and host Stephen Foskett. Now that the centralized AI platforms are beginning to charge for token usage customers are eager to deploy smaller, more specific models on-site. This demand is being fed by companies like Apple, Qualcomm, Mediatek, Broadcom, and even AMD and NVIDIA, who also feed the datacenter hardware demand. Yet suppliers of datacenter hardware like Dell, HPE, and Lenovo are doing extremely well as the build-out there continues. These companies, as well as well-known platform providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, are likely to come out on top once the AI industry shakes out.