Global IT spending is expected to reach $6.37 trillion in 2026, up 14.2% from 2025, according to Gartner’s latest quarterly forecast released on Monday.
Gartner raised its 2026 forecast from $6.15 trillion in February and $6.31 trillion in April, citing stronger-than-expected demand for AI compute capacity, cloud platforms and next-generation data centers.
Data center systems are expected to be the fastest-growing segment, with spending rising 62.5% in 2026 to $822 billion, according to Business Standard’s reporting on the forecast. Gartner’s April forecast had projected 55.8% growth for that category.
Infrastructure as a service, including cloud infrastructure from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud, is projected to increase 29.3% to $287 billion. Software spending is forecast to rise 15.5% to $1.47 trillion.
“Building the compute capacity required for AI is the largest infrastructure project ever attempted by humanity,” Gartner analyst John-David Lovelock said, according to Business Standard and The Hans India.
A separate Gartner report in May forecast worldwide AI spending of $2.59 trillion in 2026, a 47% year-over-year increase. That spending will be concentrated in servers, accelerators, storage and data center platforms rather than applications, according to the report.
Gartner’s 2026 forecasts have climbed throughout the year. In October 2025, the firm projected 9.8% growth to $6.08 trillion, then raised that to 10.8% in February 2026, 13.5% in April and 14.2% in Monday’s update.
Monday’s increase was driven by supply-side constraints that have failed to curb enterprise demand for AI capacity, Gartner said. IT services remains the largest spending category overall, while device spending growth has been moderated by elevated memory costs that are pushing up average selling prices.
