Last January, the market research firm initially forecasted that data centre capex will grow 18% as investments shift towards AI.

“AI has the potential to generate more than a trillion dollars in AI-related infrastructure spending in cloud and enterprise data centers over the next five years,” says Dell’Oro Group research director Baron Fung.

“AI infrastructure, which includes servers with GPU or custom accelerators, along with dedicated networking, storage, and facilities, are highly capital-intensive. While the industry continues to assess the potential return on AI-related investments, major efforts have been underway in the ecosystem in achieving long-term sustainable capex growth,” explains Fung.

Dell’Oro Group listed the following highlights from Data Center IT Capex 5-Year July 2024 Forecast Report:

- Worldwide server revenue is forecast to reach nearly $0.5 trillion by 2028.

- Accelerated servers may account for more than half of the total server revenues by 2028.

- Top 4 US-based cloud SPs—Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—will account for half of global data centre capex as early as 2026.