Gartner forecasts global IT spending will top $6 trillion in 2026, driven by AI infrastructure

Worldwide IT spending is expected to reach $6.15 trillion in 2026, according to a new forecast from Gartner, representing an increase of 10.8% from the year before.

On the surface, the figure suggests a technology sector back in expansion mode after years of uneven demand, layoffs, and budget tightening. But a closer look at where the money is going- and where it is not - tells a more constrained story.

Most of the projected growth is being driven by one category: infrastructure built to support artificial intelligence workloads. Other parts of the technology market are growing more slowly, and in some cases are under renewed pressure from rising costs and cautious buyers.

Data centres and servers are carrying the forecast

The fastest-growing segment in Gartner’s outlook is data centre systems, which are expected to see spending rise 31.7% in 2026, taking the category past $650 billion. Within that, server spending is projected to grow nearly 37% year-on-year.

This surge is being driven primarily by hyperscale cloud providers, which continue to invest heavily in capacity designed for AI training and inference. These companies are committing capital years in advance, ordering specialised servers and expanding data centre footprints even as broader enterprise demand remains uneven.

The logic behind the spending is straightforward. AI workloads are compute-intensive, capacity takes time to build, and falling behind competitors on infrastructure could mean permanently losing high-value customers later. For large cloud providers, the risk of overbuilding is increasingly seen as preferable to the risk of being unprepared.

Governments are also playing a role. In the US, the Middle East, and parts of Asia, public and sovereign-backed investment is flowing into data centres and AI infrastructure, often framed as strategic assets rather than purely commercial projects.

Software spending is growing — but the gains are concentrated

Software remains one of the strongest categories in the forecast, with spending expected to reach $1.43 trillion in 2026, up 14.7% from the previous year. That makes it the second-fastest-growing segment after data centre systems.

However, Gartner has revised its software growth expectations slightly downward from earlier projections, reflecting softer demand in parts of the market. The strongest growth continues to come from generative AI models, where spending is still expected to grow more than 80% in 2026.

That growth is highly concentrated among a small number of providers and platforms. While large enterprises are increasing spending on AI capabilities, many are doing so by reallocating existing budgets rather than expanding them. In practice, this often means tougher negotiations on traditional software renewals and slower adoption of non-essential tools.

As a result, the software market looks strong in aggregate, but uneven underneath. Large platforms and AI model providers are absorbing a disproportionate share of new spending, while many established vendors face longer sales cycles and increased pricing pressure.

Devices continue to sell, but growth is slowing

In contrast to infrastructure and software, device spending is expected to slow in 2026. Gartner forecasts total spending on mobile phones, PCs, and tablets to reach $836 billion, growing 6.1%, down from stronger growth rates in recent years.

Shipments continue to rise, but higher component costs - particularly memory - are pushing up average selling prices. That is discouraging device replacements, especially in price-sensitive markets.

At the lower end of the market, rising costs are also creating supply constraints. Manufacturers with thinner margins are less able to absorb price increases, which is affecting availability in some regions. For consumers and small businesses, particularly in emerging markets, longer replacement cycles are becoming the norm.

The slowdown highlights a broader pattern in the forecast: much of the growth in global IT spending is now driven by institutional buyers rather than everyday users.

A market growing unevenly

Taken together, Gartner’s forecast points to a technology market that is expanding, but not evenly. Spending is rising fastest in areas where decisions are large, capital-intensive, and difficult to reverse — data centres, servers, and long-term infrastructure contracts.

Elsewhere, growth is more cautious. Enterprises are prioritising AI-related investments, but often at the expense of other technology spending. Consumers are holding onto devices longer. Software vendors outside the AI core are facing tighter scrutiny from buyers.

The $6 trillion headline captures the scale of global IT spending, but it obscures how concentrated that spending has become. The market is being pulled forward by a relatively small number of actors making very large bets, while much of the rest of the ecosystem continues to operate under constraint.

Whether those bets ultimately prove justified will depend on how quickly AI demand translates into sustained revenue — and how widely that revenue is shared across the technology stack. For now, the forecast reflects not a broad resurgence, but a technology sector reorganising itself around a single, expensive priority.