Cloudera rides hybrid AI surge with strong FY26 gains

Cloudera has reported a strong fiscal year, citing increased demand from large organisations for data and AI platforms that run across cloud and on-premises environments.

It closed FY26 with a strong fourth quarter, reporting more than 50% year-on-year growth in new and expansion business. Cloudera also pointed to annual recurring revenue growth and more than 100% new logo growth for the quarter across all regions.

The update comes as more organisations in Australia and New Zealand move from early generative AI trials to operational deployments. Firms are placing greater weight on governance, resilience and regulatory expectations, and reassessing how to run AI models where sensitive data resides rather than moving it into a single public cloud.

Hybrid focus

Cloudera positions its platform around hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. Customers are seeking data and AI systems that work across public clouds, private data centres and edge locations, with consistent security controls and operations.

As part of that strategy, Cloudera has continued to expand what it calls a unified experience across environments, highlighting an acquisition and a series of product updates over the past year.

Its acquisition of Taikun, the third in two years, is intended to support management of Kubernetes and cloud infrastructure across hybrid and multi-cloud estates. Cloudera also tied the deal to its "Cloudera Anywhere Cloud" direction, including portable data services and a central control plane.

Product updates

Cloudera highlighted a platform update that integrates Trino with Cloudera Shared Data Experience and Cloudera Data Lineage, formerly Octopai. It said the integration provides unified data access, governance and end-to-end lineage across a data estate.

It also pointed to updates to Cloudera Iceberg REST Catalog and Cloudera Lakehouse Optimizer, alongside its support for Apache Iceberg, an open table format used in data lakehouse architectures.

The latest release of Cloudera Data Services adds "Private AI Anywhere on premises", which it described as secure, GPU-accelerated generative AI behind an enterprise firewall. Cloudera also updated Cloudera Data Visualisation for customers operating in on-premises environments.

Certifications and regulation

Cloudera emphasised certifications aimed at regulated sectors, including TX-RAMP Level 2, GovRAMP Authorised at the Moderate impact level, and FedRAMP Moderate Authorisation. Such accreditations are often used by public sector bodies and contractors when selecting technology suppliers, particularly in the United States.

Partner network

Cloudera also outlined a broader set of partnerships. It said ServiceNow, Fundamental, Pulse and Galileo.ai joined its AI Ecosystem, and cited Intel as part of a push around AI adoption across industries in Asia Pacific.

It also pointed to a partnership with Chainguard, describing a security-by-default approach at the container image level. Cloudera further cited Amazon Web Services as a launch partner for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud and its participation in the AWS Brazil Distribution Program.

Dell Technologies was another named partner. Cloudera said Dell ObjectScale integrates with its platform, describing the combined offering as a "Private AI Anywhere" platform with scale and governance features.

In telecommunications, Cloudera said it joined the AI-RAN Alliance and referenced work with Krutrim on analytics and data lake workloads for Ola on Krutrim Cloud.

Customer traction

Cloudera reported customer growth across regulated and data-intensive industries, including insurance, financial services, healthcare, automotive, telecoms and government. It cited Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank and Axis Bank as winners at the IDC Future Enterprise Awards 2025 for work involving Cloudera, and said it deepened its partnership with Bank Negara Indonesia.

Industry analyst Patrick Moorhead, Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, linked the update to wider enterprise buying patterns.

"Cloudera's performance over the past year is consistent with a broader market shift toward trusted, hybrid data and AI solutions that meet enterprises where they are," said Patrick Moorhead, Founder, CEO and Chief Analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy.

"As organisations transition from proof-of-concept experiments to using AI to drive business outcomes, managing data, governance, and AI deployment across all environments is necessary. Cloudera's reported growth demonstrates that customers value how Cloudera is delivering on these priorities."

Hiring plans

Cloudera opened new offices in San Jose and Saudi Arabia and added more than 570 hires across 30 countries. It also named Chief Product Officer Leo Brunnick and Chief Technology Officer Sergio Gago as leadership additions.

For FY27, the company plans to hire nearly 650 new employees. It has already announced updates to its AI inferencing, extending it into the data centre and positioning the move around security requirements for enterprise deployments.

Charles Sansbury, CEO of Cloudera, said: "This was a defining year for Cloudera. We delivered strong performance, expanded our ecosystem, and continued to innovate across our platform, all while staying true to our mission of bringing AI to data anywhere. As enterprises increasingly demand secure, flexible AI across all their environments, Cloudera is uniquely positioned to help them turn their data into trusted insights at scale. We're entering FY27 with strong momentum and an even stronger roadmap."