Cloudera launches hybrid cloud platform for AI workloads
Wed, 19th Aug 2026 (Yesterday)
Cloudera has launched Cloudera Anywhere Cloud, a platform for organisations running data and AI workloads across cloud and on-premises systems.
The product is designed to let customers develop and run data and AI applications across multi-cloud and private environments through a single control plane. It can be deployed as a standalone platform or used alongside existing data lakes.
Cloudera is making the launch as many companies try to move AI projects into production while dealing with fragmented infrastructure, long upgrade cycles, and stricter rules on where data can be stored and processed. The company cited research showing that 73% of IT leaders believe infrastructure performance constraints have held back operational initiatives.
The platform combines modular services, self-service provisioning, and automated management with governance controls intended to keep data in place. Users can run workloads across public cloud, sovereign infrastructure, and private data centres without moving sensitive data.
Hybrid focus
A central part of the product is support for what Cloudera describes as agentic AI, including a built-in copilot designed to turn plain-language requests into automated workflows and infrastructure tasks. This is intended to help technical and business teams work directly with proprietary data while maintaining governance and sovereignty requirements.
Customers will be able to deploy separate data and AI services through marketplace-style blueprints in different environments. Those services include Cloudera-supported engines such as Spark, Kafka, and Trino, as well as other open-source and partner tools.
The platform also supports interoperability through Apache Iceberg, Polaris Catalog, and unified APIs. Cloudera says this should reduce dependence on proprietary systems and allow analytics engines to connect without custom integration work.
Leo Brunnick, Chief Product Officer at Cloudera, outlined the company's view of the market shift.
"Enterprise AI has outgrown the public cloud-only model," said Leo Brunnick, Chief Product Officer at Cloudera. "Organisations shouldn't have to choose between innovation and control. Cloudera Anywhere Cloud brings the speed and flexibility of the cloud directly to enterprise data. This allows enterprises to accelerate AI initiatives while maintaining complete ownership of their data and intellectual property, all while optimizing the cost of their infrastructure, tokens, and business models."
Customer view
Cloudera says the platform is designed to shorten deployment times for AI-related projects and let organisations choose where workloads run based on regulatory, operational, or cost requirements. Governance policies can also be applied centrally across distributed data estates, with lineage and compliance controls maintained across deployments.
IXEN.ai, which works with complex data environments, said the product could help customers balance AI development with tighter operational controls.
"Working with complex data environments every day, we know that moving from AI experimentation to production requires both the freedom to innovate and confidence that data remains governed and under our control," said Sergio Rodríguez de Guzmán, CTO and Co-Founder at IXEN.ai. "Cloudera Anywhere Cloud gives our teams a consistent foundation for data, analytics and AI across on-premises and cloud environments, and we're excited about its potential to help us accelerate the development of agentic AI capabilities while maintaining the governance, flexibility and control required at enterprise scale."
The launch also reflects a broader push by infrastructure and data software suppliers to provide AI tools that work across mixed environments rather than only in public cloud settings. For large organisations, especially those in regulated sectors, keeping data in place while applying AI models has become a key requirement.
Cloudera says the platform can turn a company's data estate into what it describes as an open marketplace ecosystem, where first-party, partner, and open-source services can be deployed through self-service tools while automatically inheriting governance rules. The model is intended to give developers and data teams access to AI and analytics tools without bypassing internal controls.
Partner ecosystem
PuppyGraph, one of the companies working with Cloudera, said the platform's use of open data formats could help teams apply graph-based AI techniques to enterprise data without moving it.
"Enterprises are racing to put AI agents on top of their data, but agents can't reason over rows and joins alone," said Weimo Liu, CEO at PuppyGraph. "They need to query knowledge: ontology, entities, relationships, and context. With Cloudera Anywhere Cloud delivering trusted, Iceberg-based data across cloud, data center, and edge, PuppyGraph queries that same data as a knowledge graph in real time, with zero ETL and no data movement. Together, we enable every data platform team to become a knowledge team, running graph-powered AI on enterprise data wherever it lives."