AI: Spending to Rise to More Than $2.5 Trillion in 2026 – Bulk Flows into Infrastructure

Global spending on AI will rise to more than $2.5 trillion US dollars by 2026, according to new figures from US market research firm Gartner. According to BigData Insider, the bulk of these expenditures does not flow into applications, but rather into servers, platforms, and data centers. This primarily supports the industrial infrastructure for machine learning. Spending on actual applications is significantly lower.

AI Infrastructure Consumes More Than Half of Spending

According to Gartner’s forecast, companies and technology providers will spend a total of around $2.53 trillion globally on AI in 2026. This represents a 44 percent increase compared to the previous year. The driver is less the demand for new AI apps than rather the massive expansion of the technical foundation.

AI infrastructure alone is expected to consume around $1.37 trillion in spending in 2026, more than half of the funds. Infrastructure includes, for example, servers, accelerators, storage, and data center platforms. Gartner expects AI-optimized servers to increase their spending by 49 percent and account for 17 percent of the overall AI market. In addition, another $401 billion will be invested by technology providers in building new AI foundations.

“Phase of Disillusionment” Instead of Visionary Experiments

This indicates a structural shift. AI is increasingly no longer viewed as an experiment, but as an industrial production factor. “AI is in what is called the phase of disillusionment in 2026,” explains Gartner analyst John-David Lovelock. Companies therefore purchase AI less frequently as a visionary innovation project, but more often as an add-on module to their existing platforms. The focus is thus more on calculable effects rather than visions.

A look at market segments also shows this shift. AI Services will grow to nearly $589 billion by 2026, AI Software to $452 billion. Models, platforms, and data services are also growing strongly, but remain significantly smaller compared to infrastructure spending. The core of investments clearly lies below the application level, namely where computing power, networks, and data pipelines are created.

Global AI Spending by Market Segment 2025–2027 (in Million US Dollars):

Source: Gartner, January 2026.