State of the Cloud Report shows FinOps maturing as AI adoption accelerates cost, risk and governance demands
ITASCA, Ill., March 18, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Flexera, the global leader in technology spend and risk intelligence, today released its 2026 State of the Cloud Report, which shows FinOps taking its next step in maturity as organizations shift from cost control to measurable business value. While managing cloud spend remains a top challenge (85%), organizations are applying more mature FinOps practices, with 63% having established FinOps teams and 64% reporting value delivered to business units.
This elevated level of maturity reflects stronger governance and centralization, with 71% of organizations now operating a Cloud Center of Excellence (CCOE), together with greater involvement from FinOps, business units and software asset management (SAM) teams.
Alongside this shift, the report shows cloud-based AI workloads are surging, causing an increase in wasted cloud spend (29%) for the first time in five years. AI has quickly moved from experimentation to operation, with 81% of respondents stating they are using generative AI, compared to 72% last year and 47% in 2024.
In addition, organizations are now focused on how to deploy AI securely and reliably at scale. More than half (53%) of cloud leaders cite security and compliance as their top challenge for cloud-based AI initiatives, followed closely by data quality for AI model training (40%). With these challenges, increasing wasted spend, and the rising stakes of AI oversight top of mind, it’s not surprising that 47% of large enterprises are establishing dedicated AI governance teams or leaders.
“Cloud is maturing and visibility across technology is increasing,” said Brian Shannon, Chief Technology Officer, Flexera. “We’ve moved beyond treating the cloud as a cost-cutting exercise and now see it as the essential foundation for growth and the engine that allows us to turn ideas into global products. That shift requires bringing FinOps, IT asset management and governance together. As AI is reshaping cloud economics and risk, having centralized oversight is more critical than ever.”
Based on a global survey of more than 750 cloud decision-makers and users, the 15th annual report finds that as cloud environments grow more complex and AI adoption moves from experimentation to scale, organizations can no longer rely on ad hoc governance or cost‑only metrics. The report shows that cloud success in 2026 hinges on disciplined oversight, value measurement and proactive AI governance. These are the capabilities that separate mature cloud organizations from those struggling to control cost, risk and complexity.