Cloud and SaaS companies deliver computing infrastructure, platforms, and applications over the internet on a subscription basis. The three hyperscalers — AWS (Amazon), Azure (Microsoft), and Google Cloud — dominate infrastructure, while hundreds of vertical SaaS companies serve specialized markets from HR to supply chain. AI inference workloads are now the primary growth driver, reshaping capex requirements and competitive dynamics across the entire cloud stack.
AWS, Azure, and GCP quarterly growth rates are the bellwether for the entire sector. Watch consumption-based revenue models (Snowflake, Datadog) for deceleration signals. Gross margin expansion in infrastructure signals pricing power.