Worldwide spending is expected to reach $5.74 trillion next year, with server sales tripling since 2023 and software and IT services also growing, thanks to AI-related projects.
Gartner identifies generative AI as a pivotal force in tech investments for the year ahead, with the research firm’s latest projections placing global IT spending at $5.74 trillion by 2025.
The Gartner forecast highlights server sales, which are expected to triple in the coming years as genAI pushes data center systems spending up by 15.5% in 2025. Gartner reported that server sales will grow from more than $134 billion in 2023 to $332 billion by 2028, including an estimated more than $257 billion in 2025. Similar to its July forecast, Gartner points to genAI as a driving factor in high-tech investments going forward.
“GenAI will easily eclipse the effects that cloud and outsourcing vendors had on previous years regarding data center systems,” said John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, in a statement. “It took 20 years for the cloud and outsourcing vendors to build up spending to $67 billion a year on servers. The demand of genAI will help nearly triple server sales from 2023 to 2028.”
Spending on software will also increase by 14% to $1.23 trillion in 2025, Gartner reports, and IT services will grow by 9.4% to $1.73 trillion in 2025. Gartner anticipates artificial intelligence and genAI to influence spending in these areas as well.
“Spending on these segments is expected to be on AI-related projects, including email and authoring. This was a market that, despite its age and having been consolidated down to a small number of players, will add $6.6 billion to global spending in 2024 and $7.4 billion in 2025 due in part to genAI products and services,” Lovelock said.
Gartner’s worldwide IT spending forecast includes the following growth projections:
- Data center systems: 15.5%
- Devices: 9.5%
- Software: 14%
- IT services: 9.4%
- Communication services: 4.4%
- Overall IT: 9.3%
“Data center systems saw a big increase from last quarter, and a lot of that is due to the fact that data center systems have grown because hyperscalers are now really building out these AI-optimized data center offerings,” Lovelock said in a Gartner webinar on the spending forecast.
Gartner forecasts that IT spending will increase by $500 billion every year and should reach the $7 trillion mark in 2028.
