Gartner has raised its 2026 worldwide IT spending forecast to $6.37 trillion, up 14.2% from 2025, a sharper outlook than the company gave earlier this year. The revision matters because it shows that enterprise technology budgets are still expanding, but the gains are increasingly concentrated in AI-linked infrastructure, cloud services and software rather than spread evenly across the market.
Gartner said the strongest growth is coming from data centre systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), both of which are being pulled up by spending on AI infrastructure, cloud platforms and intelligent applications. The market is not lifting every category at the same pace, because technology budgets are being squeezed by inflation, supply shortages, rising hardware and memory costs, AI funding commitments and changing enterprise priorities.
“Data center systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) are the top growth segments, reflecting accelerating investment in AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, and intelligent applications,” said John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner. “Building the compute capacity required for AI is the largest infrastructure project ever attempted by humanity. Driven by the expansion of AI workloads and demand for high-performance computing, hyperscalers and enterprises are rapidly scaling next-generation data center capacity.”
According to Gartner, the fastest growth is expected in AI-related infrastructure, cloud services and software, while traditional segments face slower adjustment.
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What is changing inside the IT budget
This forecast follows a series of earlier revisions from Gartner this year. In February 2026, Gartner had projected $6.15 trillion in worldwide IT spending for 2026, equal to 10.8% growth. At that time, Gartner said server spending would rise 36.9%, and total data centre spending would increase 31.7% to more than $650 billion. It also projected software spending at $1.43 trillion in 2026, while devices were expected to grow more slowly.
The new IT spending forecast suggests the market is running hotter than Gartner expected just months ago. The latest revision is not small: the 2026 spend figure moved from $6.15 trillion to $6.37 trillion, while the growth rate rose from 10.8% to 14.2%. That is a clear sign that AI-related purchasing is still creating additional demand rather than merely reshuffling existing budgets.
[ALSO READ: Gartner Forecasts Global IT Spending to Reach $6.31 Trillion in 2026, Driven by AI Surge ]
The Gartner forecast numbers sit alongside other signs that AI infrastructure is still a large capital cycle. IDC, for example, said AI infrastructure spending reached $318 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $487 billion in 2026. IDC stated growth is being driven by hyperscaler investment, accelerated server adoption and expanding sovereign AI programmes in several regions.
The new forecast says the next round of spending is likely to favour companies tied to servers, storage, networking, cloud infrastructure and AI-ready software.
AI data centre demand is worsening shortages of grid equipment such as transformers, while hyperscaler spending is also starting to weigh on free cash flow.
Gartner’s IT global spending forecast assumes continued expansion, but the industry still faces memory shortages, power bottlenecks and long lead times for data centre equipment. According to Reuters, large data centre projects are running into grid constraints, and some investors are questioning how long hyperscalers can keep pouring money into AI infrastructure at this pace.
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