The growth of the artificial intelligence (AI) market is increasingly benefiting cloud businesses. The demand for computational resources necessary for developing and operating AI models and services has surged, leading to significant increases in revenue and operating profit for cloud providers.
On October 29, Samsung SDS reported that its annual cloud revenue rose from 1.88 trillion won in 2023 to 2.32 trillion won in 2024 and 2.68 trillion won in 2025, marking an approximate 42.5% increase over two years. In the third quarter of this year, cloud revenue reached 796.1 billion won, an 18% increase compared to the same period last year, accounting for 47% of its IT service revenue.
Within the cloud sector, the managed service provider (MSP) business grew by 25%, driven by the expansion of AX projects in the financial sector and enterprise resource planning (ERP) initiatives in the shipbuilding industry, as well as the introduction of global AI services. The cloud service provider (CSP) segment saw a 15% increase year-on-year, fueled by rising demand for the Samsung Cloud Platform (SCP) and the expansion of GPU as a service (GPUaaS) offerings in the public and software sectors. Opportunities are widening from AI infrastructure supply to enterprise system construction and operation.
Naver Cloud and NHN Cloud, which are set to announce their results next month, are also expected to report over 20% revenue growth compared to the previous year. Naver Cloud is expanding its GPU-based AI infrastructure and AI projects in the corporate and public sectors, while NHN Cloud has begun supplying NVIDIA B200-based GPU services, resulting in an 85.3% revenue increase in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.
Global tech giants are experiencing mixed results in their cloud businesses. Microsoft reported cloud revenue of $63.9 billion for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 (July to September 2026), a 30% increase from the previous year. Revenue growth for its Azure cloud platform reached 48%.
Alphabet's Google Cloud experienced even more rapid growth. Third-quarter revenue soared to $30.79 billion, a 103% increase year-on-year, exceeding market expectations of $29.57 billion. Operating profit for the same period reached $11.12 billion, more than tripling from $3.59 billion a year earlier, with an operating margin of 36.2%. Analysts attribute this improvement to the rising demand for AI infrastructure and enterprise AI solutions.
Industry experts believe that as AI services become more sophisticated, cloud providers will increasingly benefit directly. The growing adoption of AI services will inevitably lead to a higher demand for the computational resources that support them.
Moreover, the rising costs of energy and power supply needed for operating large data centers are accelerating the shift to cloud solutions, as it has become nearly impossible for individual companies to build and maintain their own infrastructure due to the substantial investments required for power facilities and cooling systems.
As a result, the trend of concentrating power and computational resources with major cloud service providers (CSPs) that possess optimized power and cooling infrastructure is intensifying, creating a virtuous cycle that directly contributes to the growth of cloud providers' performance.
Choi Jae-sik, a professor at KAIST's Graduate School of AI, stated, "As cloud transitions continue to mature, they are driving performance. It appears that the growth of cloud services due to AI is coinciding with the ongoing transition to existing cloud solutions." He added, "The more mature the cloud transition becomes, the greater the revenue from AI will be."
* This article has been translated by AI.
Copyright ⓒ Aju Press All rights reserved.