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Hyperscalers are increasing AI capacity but IT buyers are now looking at their return on investment for this much-hyped technology
IT spending is to grow almost 11% (10.8%), hitting $6.2tn in 2026, according to the latest forecast from analyst Gartner.
Gartner’s most recent IT spending forecast shows that spending on datacentre equipment is set to rise by 32% in 2026, while spending on software has been forecast to grow by nearly 15%.
Much of this is linked to hyperscalers growing their artificial intelligence (AI) compute capacity. John-David Lovelock, distinguished vice-president analyst at Gartner, said: “Demand from hyperscale cloud providers continues to drive investment in servers optimised for AI workloads.”
Along with its global outlook for IT spending, Gartner has forecast that worldwide spending on AI will total $2.52tn in 2026, a 44% increase year over year (YoY). After 20 years of flat-to-declining server spending, AI has created an explosive growth in infrastructure investment, according to Lovelock.
He said that organisations are spending three-to-four times more money on AI-optimised servers than traditional servers. “Three times more money is spent on servers to do AI than everything we currently do with computers,” he said.
Gartner’s forecast shows that building AI foundations alone will drive a 49% increase in spending on AI-optimised servers, representing 17% of total AI spending for 2026. It predicted that AI infrastructure will also add $401 bn in spending in 2026 as a result of technology providers building out AI foundations
According to Gartner’s forecast, datacentre power consumption is projected to double in four years due to AI demands.
Lovelock noted that technology providers are currently investing heavily in AI infrastructure, however he pointed out that enterprise IT buyers are in Gartner’s “trough of disillusionment” phase, which, from an AI adoption perspective, means they tend to adopt AI-enabled products from existing software providers.
“Because AI is in the trough of disillusionment throughout 2026, it will most often be sold to companies by their incumbent software provider rather than bought as part of a new moonshot project,” said Lovelock. “The improved predictability of ROI must occur before AI can truly be scaled up by the business.”
Nevertheless, Gartner’s forecast suggests that for IT and business leaders, AI is a transformational technology.
“Getting away from AI is going to be impossible, so the transformation is there. We’re seeing all the money being spent, we’re seeing the compute capacity required to do all of that transformation, and the money is the leading indicator of how important it is,” he said.
Gartner expects the market for AI data to more than double by 2027 from $3.1bn to $6.4bn. Lovelock said synthetic data is driving this growth. For Lovelock, synthetic data overcomes data scarcity issues, addresses privacy concerns and reduces bias in AI training. In addition he notes that synthetic data enables the creation of comprehensive training scenarios that are impossible with real data.
Not all areas of IT are experiencing growth or benefiting from the drive to adopt AI. Gartner’s IT spending forecast shows that market-demand constraints will slow growth to 6.1% in 2026.
“This slowdown is largely due to rising memory prices, which are increasing average selling prices and discouraging device replacements,” said Lovelock. “Additionally, higher memory costs are causing shortages in the lower end of the market, where profit margins are thinner. These factors are contributing to more muted growth in device shipments.”
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Tama Schroeder