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New Reveal Report: 91% of eDiscovery Buyers Demand Private Deployment as AI Moves From Experiment to Operational Priority
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2026 eDiscovery Buyers Report: AI and Deployment Trends

As AI becomes an operational priority for legal teams, and the industry's main incumbent prepares to sunset its private deployment solution by 2028, buyers are rethinking where eDiscovery runs and who controls it. In a survey of 200 senior eDiscovery buyers, we found:

AI has moved from experimental to operational, pushing eDiscovery infrastructure decisions higher up the priority list
A looming deadline is forcing the issue: the leading incumbent's plan to sunset private deployment by 2028 is prompting buyers to reassess their options now
Deployment flexibility is a top demand, as teams want control over where their data and models run to support AI initiatives
Control is becoming a differentiator, with buyers increasingly wary of vendor lock-in as they plan their next move

The AI disruption meets a forced migration

Two pressures now hit every large eDiscovery buyer at once. AI rewires their cost/value equation and their workflows while causing data volumes to explode. Meanwhile, the market’s largest incumbent has forced a deplatforming, putting infrastructure decisions back on the table. The foundation shifts, and the workflows reinvent, so how do you choose what technology to invest in amongst that landscape? We asked. Our most conclusive findings include:

1
Buyers base platform and infrastructure decisions primarily on the technology's perceived ability to accommodate AI as it expands.  
2
Private deployment caseloads keep climbing since buyers see private and hybrid models as the best way to absorb the cost of exploding AI-driven data volumes while keeping their AI models independent.  
3
Market dynamics point toward an exclusively “public cloud-first future,” but nearly half of all matters today already require private cloud or on-premises deployment for data residency or cost reasons.
4
Buyers distrust a single deployment approach: 68% say commercial interest drives their primary vendor's deployment consolidations more than the market’s actual needs.
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91%

Report that their share of matters requiring private or on-premises deployment has grown over the past 24 months

46%

Average share of all matters that already require private or on-premises deployment

100%

Say the ability to run their own proprietary or fine-tuned AI models is important to their operations

"The buyers we surveyed have made their position clear: they want AI capability and deployment control, and they see every reason to have both. As AI models evolve and data volumes climb, the organizations that lock themselves into a single vendor's infrastructure will find it increasingly difficult to adapt."

Eric Harmon
CEO of Reveal

Get the full 2026 eDiscovery Buyers Report

A comprehensive read on how 200 senior-level and executive eDiscovery decision-makers at large U.S. organizations make deployment decisions in 2026 and whether those decisions can keep pace with their AI strategy. This report includes:

How firm-wide AI initiatives reshape eDiscovery workflows and where proprietary LLMs fit in.

Why eDiscovery costs keep climbing 20% a year, and why buyers see private and hybrid deployment as the more economical path.

Nine deployment factors ranked, plus the four compounding risks of a public-cloud-only model: cost, security, data sovereignty, and AI model access.

What sets deployment leaders apart, and where matters migrate as the incumbent platform sunsets.

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Reveal Private Deployment

Full platform parity with complete control over data and AI models
Delivers full feature parity with Reveal's platform while supporting proprietary, fine-tuned, and third-party AI models within a single environment
Runs across private cloud and hybrid configurations in the U.S. and EMEA
Gives legal teams direct control over data residency and AI model selection, with flexibility and model independence built into the architecture from the ground up

Trusted by thousands of modern legal teams globally
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