State of Local AI 2026: key findings

We surveyed 12,000 Gotchi users across 42 countries for our first State of Local AI report. The results paint a clear picture: local AI has gone mainstream, and the shift away from cloud is accelerating.

Key findings

• 73% of respondents run AI exclusively or primarily on local hardware, up from 41% a year ago.
• Agent workflow adoption grew 340% year-over-year. The average user runs 4.2 agents.
• Privacy is the #1 reason for choosing local (89%), followed by cost savings (74%) and offline access (68%).
• Apple Silicon users report 3.8× higher satisfaction than CPU-only users, driven by inference speed.
• The most-used local model is Llama 3.1 70B (42% share), followed by DeepSeek V3 (28%) and Qwen 2.5 (15%).

The agent inflection point

The biggest surprise was agent adoption. A year ago, fewer than 5% of local AI users ran automated workflows. Today, it's 38% - and growing fastest among non-technical users who use templates and visual editors rather than code.

Agents are doing for local AI what apps did for smartphones. They turn raw capability into daily utility.