In 2026 AI factories will redefine resiliency and disaster recovery. ( Image created using ChatGPT)
As artificial intelligence (AI) adoption accelerates across enterprises, 2026 is expected to be a turning point for how organisations design resiliency and disaster recovery.
Central to this shift is the emergence of AI factories – purpose-built environments that combine compute, data, software and operational workflows to industrialise AI at scale.
This is according to John Roese, global CTO and chief AI officer at Dell Technologies, outlining AI predictions for 2026 in a report titled: “From big bang to light speed: the AI revolution continues.”
With firms increasingly embedding AI into mission-critical processes, traditional backup-and-recovery models are proving inadequate. In their place, AI factories are expected to introduce a more intelligent, autonomous and predictive approach to business continuity, he notes.
“As AI becomes embedded in core business functions, continuity becomes non-negotiable.
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AI infrastructure will evolve to prioritise resiliency, redefining what disaster recovery means in an AI-driven world,” Roese explains.
“The focus shifts from simply backing up systems to ensuring AI capabilities remain operational, even if primary systems go offline. In the coming year, the AI factories of the world must become resilient and survivable in a hybrid, multi-cloud, AI environment. Achieving this will require innovation not only from data protection and cyber resiliency companies but also from the core AI technology ecosystem, governments and at-scale AI innovators.”
As firms deploy AI across customer service, fraud detection, logistics, healthcare and manufacturing, data availability and integrity are becoming more critical than application uptime alone.
AI factories are designed to manage massive, distributed datasets across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. In 2026, disaster recovery strategies will increasingly focus on model state, training data and inference pipelines, not just virtual machines and databases.
SA’s AI factory landscape began taking shape in 2025, positioning the country as a regional hub for sovereign AI infrastructure.
In October, Altron launched what it describes as SA’s first operational AI factory, built on Nvidia technology and hosted in local data centres to ensure compliance with data-sovereignty requirements.
Alongside Altron, Cassava Technologies announced plans to build Africa’s first large-scale AI factory in SA, also leveraging Nvidia’s advanced computing platforms. Cassava’s initiative is aimed at delivering AI-as-a-Service, supercomputing and model-training capabilities for enterprises, governments and researchers, reducing reliance on offshore infrastructure.
Global vendors such as Dell Technologies are complementing these efforts through their AI factory offerings in the local market, providing pre-validated AI stacks that integrate with existing enterprise systems.
Together, these developments signal a shift toward locally hosted AI-driven infrastructure that is expected to underpin more resilient, automated disaster recovery strategies as AI adoption accelerates into 2026.
“To truly make AI resilient for the enterprise, the entire value chain of AI must work together,” notes Roese.
According to Roese, in 2023, we witnessed the Big Bang of technology – a year where AI ignited a new era of innovation and transformation.
In 2025, GenAI went mainstream and agentic entered the scene. Most importantly, we saw real return on investment start to emerge in major enterprises.
“In 2026, the AI story picks up speed. In less than three years, the theoretical has become tangible, and the future is arriving at light speed.
“This year we’ll see AI reengineer the entire fabric of enterprise and industry. It will drive new ways of operating, building and innovating at a scale and pace unimaginable just a year ago.
Understanding these changes is essential because those who invest in resilient, adaptable foundations today will be ready to navigate and lead through the rapid changes ahead,” Roese points out.
