Runpod's 2026 State of AI Report Reveals Massive Shift Toward Qwen, Blackwell and Modular Video Pipelines

MT. LAUREL, N.J., March 12, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Runpod, the platform that empowers developers to build and run custom AI systems at scale, today announced its first State of AI Report. Built on anonymized platform traffic and GPU utilization data, the report provides a ground-level view of how AI is being used in production across 183 countries, moving beyond industry hype to reveal the infrastructure patterns defining the current era.

The report highlights a significant shift in the open-source landscape, noting that Alibaba's Qwen has overtaken Meta's Llama as the most widely deployed self-hosted Large Language Model (LLM) on the platform. Additionally, the data indicates that the market is prioritizing efficiency and modularity; nearly 70% of image workflows now run through ComfyUI, and video upscaling workloads outpace raw generation by a 2:1 ratio.

"This report isn't a survey of what people say they're using; it's an aggregated record of what is being used to generate revenue – and the patterns we're seeing are much more nuanced." said Brennen Smith, CTO at Runpod. "The market is pragmatic, optimizing for performance per dollar and inference latency. As AI transitions from experimental to essential infrastructure in verticals like HealthTech and FinTech, we're seeing a massive diversification in use cases ranging from protein structure prediction to robotics kinematics to real-time coding assistants."

Key Findings from Runpod's State of AI Report Include:

Find the full 2026 State of AI Report, including detailed GPU pricing trends and adoption forecasts, here.

Read the blog: The AI market looks nothing like the narrative

About Runpod

Runpod is a globally distributed AI cloud platform that empowers developers at any organization to deploy custom full-stack AI applications – simply, globally, and at scale. With Runpod's key offerings – Pods, Clusters, Endpoints, and Serverless – developers can develop, train and scale AI applications in one cloud within seconds. Runpod is making cloud computing accessible and affordable without compromising control, customization or cost-efficiency. To learn more, visit https://www.runpod.io/.

SOURCE Runpod