First launched in 2024, and operated by global cloud computing awards body The Cloud Awards, The A.I. Awards has rapidly grown to become one of the biggest programs in the Cloud Awards annual calendar. Nominees into the 2026 awards include organizations located all over the world – from household names and established technology giants, to exciting new startups.

The program recognizes outstanding AI-driven solutions, and excellence in AI platforms and infrastructure. Agentic solutions and AI assistants are new areas celebrated in this year’s program, joining established categories focused on areas including automation, natural language processing, and AI governance. The program also recognizes AI solutions built to support specific business operations and industry use cases.

The Cloud Awards judges have completed their initial review of all nominations received, resulting in the publication of today’s shortlist.

CEO of The Cloud Awards, James Williams, said: “We’re very proud to reveal the shortlist in The 2026 A.I. Awards.

“This first phase of the awards is always extremely exciting, as we are privileged to read about and see for ourselves some of the outstanding work that is happening in the most dynamic area of cloud computing. Each year, nominees into The A.I. Awards continue to show how technological boundaries are being pushed, and new levels of business value are being unlocked through clever applications of AI.

“Vcinity is well deserving of their shortlist place, and we wish them luck in the next round of judging.”

Harry Car, CEO at Vcinity said: “The AI infrastructure conversation has yet to deal with an enormous issue: true scale across networking that operates when AI data centers and factories are hundreds or thousands of miles apart.  While the focus has been heavily on GPUs and compute, AI performance is ultimately constrained, or unleashed, by how quickly data can reach them. Slow data access and movement can leave expensive GPUs idle, extend training cycles, delay inference, and create bottlenecks across the entire AI lifecycle. Vcinity uniquely acts as a connective tissue across AI architectures—at any latency—enabling organizations to move and access massive datasets at high, predictable speeds. This keeps AI workflows running continuously, maximizing compute utilization, and accelerating the path from data to production-ready insights.”

The program will now begin its second round of judging, where The Cloud Awards judges will select, and take forwards, a group of finalists in each category. A.I. Awards finalists will be revealed on September 22. Winners will be announced in October.

To view the full shortlist, please visit: https://www.cloud-awards.com/ai-awards/2026-shortlist