Edge AI Survey: As Inference Expands Beyond the Hyperscalers, New Leaders Begin to Emerge

Research evidence excerpt

Edge AI Survey: As Inference Expands Beyond the Hyperscalers, New Leaders Begin to Emerge

Idea

July 16, 2026 11:10 AM GMT

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLCMSoftware | North America Sanjit K Singh

Equity Analyst

Edge AI Survey: As Inference Sanjit.Singh@morganstanley.comJonathan Eisenson +1 415 576-2060

Research Associate

Jonathan.Eisenson@morganstanley.com +1 212 761-2808

Expands Beyond the Ryan Lountzis

Ryan.Lountzis@morganstanley.com +1 212 761-3189

Hyperscalers, New Leaders Abhishek S Murli

Abhishek.S.Murli@morganstanley.com +1 212 761-7388

Begin to Emerge

Software

North America

What’s Changed Industry View Attractive

Cloudflare Inc (NET.N) From To

Price Target $305.00 $322.00

Our inaugural Edge AI survey suggests the inference opportunity

is expanding beyond hyperscalers to include edge compute

platforms. Results screen +ve for NET & AKAM, with NET the

clear early leader in edge AI, AKAM a credible alternative, and AI-

native app development driving adoption for Vercel.

Key Takeaways

AI inference is expanding beyond hyperscalers, creating new opportunities for

specialized edge infrastructure providers.

Enterprise Edge AI remains early, but partners expect adoption to accelerate

meaningfully through 2027.

Developer platforms are becoming key differentiators, driven by AI inference,

edge compute, and agentic AI workloads.

NET emerges as the clear leader in edge inference, reinforcing our conviction in

Cloudflare's long-term Edge AI opportunity; raising PT to $322.

AKAM is emerging as a credible alternative for edge inference, while AI-native app

development driving adoption for Vercel.

Our inaugural Edge AI survey of ~40 resellers/partners suggests enterprise Edge

AI adoption is progressing from experimentation toward targeted production