IDC: Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Spending to Surpass $200 Billion in Five Years

The global Artificial Intelligence (AI) infrastructure market is on track to surpass $200 billion USD 2028, according to IDC. Organizations increased spending on compute and storage hardware infrastructure for AI deployments by 97% year-over-year in the first half of 2024, reaching $47.4 billion.

The Massachusetts-based market researcher says the AI infrastructure market has sustained double-digit since 2019, driven primarily by investment in servers for AI deployments. In 1H24, servers accounted for 95% of the total spending, growing 105% compared to the same period last year. AI Infrastructure deployed in cloud and shared environments accounts for 72% of the total server spending in AI in 1H24, as hyperscalers, cloud service providers and digital service providers expand their infrastructure capabilities. Traditional enterprises, by contrast, have largely lagged behind in adopting on-premises AI infrastructure.

Servers with an embedded accelerator are the preferred infrastructure for AI platforms, accounting for 70% of the total server AI infrastructure spending — growing 178% in the first half of the year 2024. IDC projects that accelerated servers will exceed 75% of the server AI infrastructure spending by 2028, growing at a 42% 5-year CAGR.

Storage spending in AI infrastructure has been driven by the need to manage large datasets required for training AI models, as well as storage of training, checkpoints and repositories of data for inference phases. This category reported an 18% year-over-year growth rate in 1H24 with 40% of the spending coming from cloud deployments.

“IDC expects AI adoption to continue growing at a remarkable pace as hyperscalers, CSPs, private companies, and governments around the world are increasingly prioritizing AI,” said Lidice Fernandez, Group Vice President of IDC’s Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers. “Growing concerns around energy consumption for AI infrastructure will become a factor in datacenters looking for alternatives to optimize their architectures and minimize energy use.”

The United States leads the global AI infrastructure market, accounting for 59% of the total spending in 1H24, followed by PRC (20%), APJ (13%), and EMEA (7%). Over the next five years, IDC expects the PRC region to grow at the fastest CAGR (35%) followed by the USA (34%), APJ (21.3%) and EMEA (20.9%).

Further details can be found in IDC’s Worldwide Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Tracker Taxonomy, 2024.

Channel Impact^®
The artificial intelligence space is frequently considered to be among the most notable opportunities for channel partners, moving forward.