The key facts

  • Gartner forecasts global AI spending to grow 47.5% to $4.05 trillion in 2027
  • Infrastructure will account for 59% of spending, or about $2.4 trillion, growing 53%
  • Spending on AI-optimized servers will rise from $527.6 billion to $957.2 billion

Gartner forecast: AI spending to exceed $4 trillion

Global spending on artificial intelligence will grow by 47.5% in 2027, reaching $4.05 trillion, up from roughly $2.75 trillion in 2026. The forecast was presented on Thursday by research and consulting firm Gartner, which linked the growth to expanding AI adoption by organizations and technology providers building out computing capacity.

Infrastructure — the main growth driver

Infrastructure will account for nearly three-fifths of all spending: its volume, according to the forecast, will increase by 53% to approximately $2.4 trillion, or 59% of global AI spending. The largest segment — AI-optimized servers — will grow from $527.6 billion this year to $957.2 billion in 2027. Gartner attributes this to the continued infrastructure expansion by major cloud providers and specialized AI cloud companies, as well as rising server prices due to more expensive memory. Gartner research chief John-David Lovelock noted that faster-than-expected growth in user requirements is increasing demand for infrastructure to run AI applications and train increasingly compute-intensive models.

Services, software and generative models

Spending on AI services is forecast to grow 29.5% to $746 billion, and on AI software — by 42% to $649 billion. Lovelock explained that service providers help organizations advance AI initiatives through strategy, data preparation, integration and implementation, while businesses are increasing software budgets as vendors embed AI features into existing products and release platforms for managing their use. Spending on AI cybersecurity will reach $86 billion, up from $51 billion in 2026, while spending on AI agents and assistants will more than double from $30 billion to $67 billion. Spending on generative AI models will grow 82% to $51 billion amid demand for autonomous agents, multimodal applications and industry-specific solutions: specialized models will rise in price by 99%, but foundation models will retain 81% of spending in this segment.