IT spending surge
- Analysts now expect global IT spending to rise sharply in 2026, driven largely by AI infrastructure buildout. - Gartner forecasts $6.31 trillion in IT spending for 2026, up 13.5% from 2025, with datacenter systems leading growth. - That skews vendor opportunity toward data centres, cloud services, and implementation partners rather than pre-AI SaaS seat growth. (infotechlead.com)
Global information technology spending is now on track to hit $6.31 trillion in 2026, after Gartner raised its forecast on April 22 and tied the jump to artificial intelligence infrastructure. (gartner.com) Gartner now expects 2026 spending to grow 13.5% from 2025, up from the 10.8% growth and $6.15 trillion total it projected on February 3. (gartner.com 1) (gartner.com 2) The fastest-growing category is data center systems, which Gartner says will rise 55.8% in 2026 to $787.99 billion, compared with a 31.7% growth forecast and $653.4 billion total in Gartner’s February update. (gartner.com 1) (gartner.com 2) That category covers the hardware underneath artificial intelligence systems: servers, accelerators, memory, and the rest of the equipment inside large computing facilities. Gartner said higher spending is being driven by “AI‑optimized processors, accelerators, and enabling technologies,” along with record price increases for high-bandwidth memory. (gartner.com) The biggest pool of money still sits in information technology services, not hardware. Gartner forecasts IT services spending will reach $1.87 trillion in 2026, ahead of software at $1.44 trillion, communications services at $1.36 trillion, devices at $856.2 billion, and data center systems at $788.0 billion. (gartner.com) That split points vendors toward cloud infrastructure, implementation work, and managed services rather than the older software model of adding more employee seats each year. Gartner said hyperscaler purchases and “AI-centric software segments” are outpacing more traditional categories, while infrastructure as a service was one reason for the upward revision. (gartner.com) Software is still growing quickly, with Gartner now projecting a 15.1% increase to $1.44 trillion in 2026. The firm said generative artificial intelligence is producing the sharpest gains in model development software, where spending growth is expected to more than double year over year. (gartner.com) Devices look slower by comparison. Gartner expects device spending to reach $856.19 billion in 2026, but said rising memory prices are pushing up selling prices and stretching replacement cycles, especially in lower-margin parts of the market. (gartner.com) The revised forecast leaves 2026 looking less like a broad enterprise software boom and more like a buildout of the physical and service layers needed to run artificial intelligence at scale. Gartner’s new numbers put that buildout at the center of the technology market for the rest of the year. (gartner.com)
