Nutanix Inc. sits at the crossroads of two powerful but conflicting trends: the push to the cloud and the pull back on-prem. The company that once sold boxes in racks now sells freedom — the promise to run workloads anywhere. Whether that promise pays off depends on which way enterprise AI turns next.

At the Nutanix .NEXT conference last June, the company outlined a strategic shift. Long known for hyperconverged infrastructure hardware-plus-software, Nutanix told the crowd: We’re moving up the stack. We will be the multicloud control plane, the AI-ready platform across data centers, cloud and edge. It unveiled tighter partnerships with major players — public cloud providers, hardware OEMs and AI accelerators — and talked about “workload flexibility” becoming a demand, not a nice-to-have. 

Fresh announcements followed: a hypervisor-independent operating environment, extended support for cloud clusters and a wider ecosystem of partner integrations. The announcements addressed many of the questions enterprises are grappling with around where AI and compute should live.

“We want to be the platform for companies to run applications and manage their data. The specific set of applications are going to evolve,” Nutanix Chief Executive Officer Rajiv Ramaswami told theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. “It used to be VM applications; now it’s cloud-native applications. Tomorrow, it’s going to be AI and AI-influencing applications.” 

The question now: Where in the IT world will AI lead companies, and will Nutanix’s predictions play out? 

This feature is part of SiliconANGLE Media’s ongoing coverage of enterprise infrastructure and AI platforms. (* Disclosure below.)

Traction in hybrid cloud

Since the conference, several critical pieces have landed. In October 2025, Nutanix rolled out Partner Central, a unified portal designed to streamline how resellers, integrators and service providers engage with the company — offering real-time dashboards for sales performance, deal registration and rebate tracking. It’s the kind of infrastructure that rarely grabs headlines but plays a quiet, essential role in scaling an enterprise ecosystem. 

Around the same time, Gartner Inc. named Nutanix a Leader in its 2025 Magic Quadrant for Distributed Hybrid Infrastructure — a signal that the company’s long pivot from hardware vendor to software platform is gaining traction. Then came another signal from the field: Fujitsu Ltd. migrated roughly 3,000 mission-critical service operations in Japan onto the Nutanix Cloud Platform, reporting cost reductions near 30% and update-time savings over 90%.

Those moves signal more than incremental product updates, according to Bob Laliberte, practice lead at theCUBE Research. Taken together, they point to a company working to embed itself deeper into enterprise operations — not just as an infrastructure vendor, but as a partner hub and hybrid-cloud control point that increasingly underpins day-to-day data center operations.

Market tailwinds for Nutanix

There are winds at Nutanix’s back, but they didn’t blow in overnight. Enterprises are waking up to a hard truth: “All-cloud” isn’t always optimal. One recent survey reveals that 67% of enterprises have already repatriated some workloads, and 87% plan to do so in the next 12–24 months. Data gravity, compliance, latency and cost pressure make hybrid solutions more than a convenience — they’re a necessity for many. Nutanix’s pitch to run workloads anywhere lands in that gap. 

Nutanix, like every other tech company, wants to be friends with AI — and it has a credible story to tell. Workloads increasingly want to live near the data and close to users. On-prem, edge, hybrid — all of it matters. Nutanix wants to be the control plane, the conductor of that complex orchestra. Its once-understated “run anywhere” narrative now carries more urgency as AI reshapes infrastructure decisions.

Nutanix exemplifies the idea that luck is when hard work meets opportunity, according to Laliberte.

“They’ve been putting the company on the right track to be able to take advantage of an opportunity that arose out of other circumstances; now they’re able to quickly capitalize on it,” he said. “Since Ramaswami has taken over the company, they’ve made a lot of hard decisions to move the company in a direction that’s now really starting to pay off.” 

When Broadcom Inc. acquired VMware in late 2023, analysts predicted up to 30% of its install base would defect, with Nutanix poised to receive a large portion. Building on that momentum, Nutanix has focused on scaling its partner ecosystem. Strong partnerships mean faster customer acquisition, deeper enterprise reach and a way to lure service providers tired of legacy stacks.

At the same time, the market has become less forgiving. In late 2025, Nutanix adjusted its fiscal-year outlook, tempering revenue expectations and triggering renewed scrutiny from investors. While the company continues to emphasize long-term strategy over near-term volatility, the reaction underscores the execution pressure facing vendors betting on hybrid and AI-centric infrastructure models.

Hybrid has traditionally been a refuge for organizations constrained by regulation or security — banks, hospitals and government agencies. But enterprise AI has reframed that narrative. Training and inference workloads introduce new cost, latency and data-gravity considerations that make hybrid architectures newly attractive beyond the usual suspects.

Where Nutanix once risked being viewed as an HCI company clinging to relevance in a cloud-first world, it is now positioning itself as purpose-built for a more complex, AI-driven deployment reality, according to Laliberte.

The battle for the midpoint is intensifying

Hyperscalers such as Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC have been expanding hybrid and multicloud platforms — including AWS Outposts, Azure Arc and Google Anthos — that extend their control planes across cloud and on-premises environments, challenging traditional infrastructure vendors. Industry data shows that AWS, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud together control roughly two-thirds of the global cloud infrastructure market — a level of dominance that reinforces why their hybrid and multicloud platform pushes shape competitive expectations for vendors such as Nutanix.

Nutanix originally built its business around HCI before expanding into hybrid cloud and software platforms, a history that illustrates the perception challenge of repositioning itself as a modern, AI-ready orchestrator in the enterprise. While plenty of enterprises can forgive a product being older or less advanced if it’s the cheaper and easier to adopt option, will hyperscalers’ hybrid offerings be able to compete in those areas? 

A Sept. 2025 survey found that 94% of IT decision-makers struggle with cloud costs, with 40% anticipating AI will become the top cost challenge within three years. And it’s not just cost: 55% of IT leaders see value in keeping AI workloads — both training and inference — closer to their own infrastructure, according to a 2025 VMware by Broadcom study. The results are not necessarily saying public cloud is worse for training — it’s still often used — but in practice, cost, data gravity and latency push them toward private or hybrid setups for at least some AI workloads.

That positioning extends into how Nutanix is approaching AI itself. The company is particularly set on agentic AI in the enterprise and is even using its own data for this purpose. 

“On the data side, we have our own proprietary IP,” Ramaswami said. “We are investing in enhancing that. That’s the core proposition of the platform.” 

Nutanix leverages its IP within its platform to drive AI across infrastructure, operations and product innovation in a three-pronged strategy: AI on Nutanix to run workloads efficiently, AI at Nutanix to optimize its operations and AI in Nutanix to enhance its products.

Then there is the central bet: hybrid. Nutanix’s value proposition depends on enterprises continuing to value flexibility — the ability to blend on-prem, edge and cloud resources. If organizations ultimately consolidate back into hyperscaler-centric models, the hybrid narrative weakens — not because Nutanix can’t deliver, but because buyers may decide they no longer need that level of abstraction.

AI’s split personality — cloud-heavy training paired with location-sensitive inference — is keeping hybrid architectures firmly in play. Nutanix has spent years preparing for this moment, but the path forward is narrow, crowded and unforgiving.

All sights on enterprise AI

The cloud-native hype train roars on, led by hyperscalers with vast muscle. Yet a more measured approach is gaining currency: hybrid, on-prem, edge, data-gravity and AI inference where it matters. Nutanix wants to be the umbrella in that intersection. 

It has credible technology, relevant partnerships and strong market signals. But execution will ultimately decide the outcome, according to Laliberte. If enterprises double down on pure public cloud or lock deeper into hyperscaler ecosystems, Nutanix risks being sidelined. If, however, AI pushes organizations toward flexible, hybrid-centric operating models, Nutanix’s long-running “any app, anywhere” vision may indeed find its moment.

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the Nutanix .NEXT event. Neither Nutanix, the sponsor of theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE