62% of companies now use Java to power their AI apps

More companies are using Java as the foundational language for AI development, according to a new report released today.

According to Java platform provider Azul’s 2026 State of Java Study and Report, 62% of organizations surveyed are currently using Java to code their AI capabilities, up from 50% last year.

Java for scale

This reflects the move towards integrating machine learning models with existing Java applications. Additionally, as companies move AI from experimentation to production, Java is becoming essential for scaling AI workloads, said Gil Tene, co-founder and CTO of Azul.

“People aren’t just making little demos and playing around with it; they’re building real applications using Java for AI,” says Tene. new stack.

The Azul Reports FAQ says: “While other popular languages ​​such as Python are often used for rapid prototyping and model building, enterprises rely on Java to run AI in production because of its proven scalability, stability, security, and performance in production.”

Meanwhile, Tene points out that many major AI libraries and frameworks now offer mature Java integration, lowering the barrier for enterprise teams to adopt AI without switching languages ​​or retraining staff.

Additionally, 31% of respondents said that more than half of the Java applications they currently build include AI functionality and are supported by a mature ecosystem of Java-friendly AI libraries such as Java-ML (45%), Deep Java Library (33%), OpenCL (25%), Spring AI (23%), and PyTorch (20%).

Stay competitive

The top features survey participants said are important for Java to remain competitive in AI-enabled development environments include long-term support for the latest Java versions (35%), built-in security features (34%), observability insights (32%), support for large-scale data access (30%), and integration with large-scale language models (30%), Azul said in the report.

Java and Python

As a dominant language in the enterprise space, Java also supports the large-scale, continuously running systems that AI requires. Additionally, Java plays a pivotal role in running AI-enhanced services in production and integrating machine learning models into enterprise workflows, regardless of whether the models are built in Java or Python.

In fact, Azul’s report shows that Python, a “synonym” for AI development, is the third most popular language for implementing AI functionality among respondents, followed by Java in first place and JavaScript in second place, Tene said.

“Python and AI are synonymous for prototyping and simple, time-consuming phases. But when it comes to functionality, Java dominates for back-end applications,” he says.

However, Tene acknowledges that because the study was conducted only among Java users, the results are necessarily biased towards Java-centric development patterns, particularly AI adoption.

“…While Python may never relinquish its position as the top programming language for generating AI functionality, Java is becoming the default language for running AI applications themselves,” the Azul report states.

The report shows that all respondents using AI code generation tools, 30% report that more than half of their code is generated entirely by AI.

trend

Meanwhile, the Azul 2026 State of Java Survey & Report found that 41% of enterprises are using high-performance Java platforms to reduce cloud spending, Tene said. High-performance Java platforms such as: Azul Platform Prime delivers faster execution, reduced memory usage, and improved garbage collection, allowing organizations to run the same workloads with fewer cloud resources. Reduced infrastructure and operational costs.

Overall, the most important Java trends for enterprises in 2026 include increased use of Java in AI workloads, widespread migration from Oracle Java to OpenJDK, and increased focus on performance-driven cloud cost optimization, according to the report.

“Enterprises are prioritizing predictable licensing and high-performance Java platforms that support both traditional applications and modern AI-driven systems,” Azul says.

“Java continues to prove its durability and strategic importance as enterprises navigate one of the most transformational periods in modern computing,” Azul co-founder and CEO Scott Sellers said in a statement.

“From powering the next generation of AI-powered applications to helping organizations take back control of their cloud spend and modernize their assets, Java continues to be at the heart of innovation and operational excellence.”