AI Inferencing Is Headed for the Network Edge
Network World, Monday, September 14th, 2026
Gartner expects two-thirds of enterprises to deploy edge AI by 2029, up from 10% in 2025, driven by data gravity and sovereignty.
Full AI inferencing at the network edge is now technically feasible, opening the door to applications that respond autonomously to sensor data in real time.
Gartner predicts that by 2028 more than two-thirds of enterprise-managed data will be created and processed outside the data center or cloud, and that more than two-thirds of enterprises globally will deploy edge AI by 2029, up from 10% in 2025; IDC expects half of enterprise AI inference workloads to run on endpoints or edge nodes by 2030. Data gravity is a primary driver, with roughly 11.7 billion IoT devices installed in 2025 growing 9% annually and as much as 90% of edge data going unprocessed.