Global spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure surged to a record $86 billion in the third quarter of 2025, according to IDC.
The latest IDC Worldwide Quarterly Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure Tracker indicates that the market has moved beyond early pilot deployments and entered a multi-year expansion phase driven by accelerated compute demand and hyperscaler capital expenditure.
Global AI Infrastructure Spending Set for Long-Term Growth
IDC expects full-year 2025 spending on AI infrastructure to reach $334 billion and grow to more than $902 billion by 2029. Annual growth is forecast to remain above 30 percent through 2027 before easing into the mid-20 percent range later in the decade.
The continued momentum underscores the central role of high-performance compute and data infrastructure as organizations deploy increasingly complex generative AI and machine learning workloads.
Lidice Fernandez, group vice president of Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers at IDC, said the market has clearly shifted into a sustained expansion cycle, supported by long-term investment commitments from leading AI platform providers and hyperscalers.
Servers Dominate AI Infrastructure Spending
Servers accounted for the vast majority of spending in Q3 2025, generating $84 billion and representing nearly 98 percent of total AI-centric infrastructure investment.
Key spending trends in the quarter included:
- Cloud and shared deployments accounted for more than 86 percent of spending, reflecting the growing reliance on scalable infrastructure.
- AI-centric storage reached $1.76 billion as demand increased for high-performance repositories to support model training and inference checkpoints.
- Both x86 and non-x86 systems saw strong adoption as AI platforms expanded capacity.
Accelerated servers remain the foundation of AI infrastructure, with elevated spending levels signaling sustained demand for GPU-powered compute even as year-over-year growth moderates from earlier peaks.
United States and China Lead Global Investment
Geography played a major role in the surge in AI infrastructure spending.
The United States is expected to remain the largest market in 2025, accounting for around 76 percent of global spending. Investment is projected to rise from $254 billion in 2025 to nearly $708 billion by 2029, driven by hyperscalers expanding large-scale data center capacity.
China is forecast to be the second fastest-growing major region, with spending expected to increase from $39.1 billion in 2025 to more than $139 billion by 2029. Growth is supported by domestic AI platforms and sovereign AI initiatives.
Other regional highlights include:
- Asia Pacific excluding Japan and China grew 60 percent as hyperscalers and regional cloud providers expanded localized AI deployments.
- Western Europe recorded 62 percent growth, supported by ARM-based systems and large-scale GPU deployments.
- Japan grew 27 percent, while the Middle East and Africa expanded 98 percent due to targeted investments.
- Canada posted the fastest growth at 126 percent, though from a small base.
- Latin America grew 24 percent and Central and Eastern Europe increased 89 percent.
Why Growth Continues Despite Moderation
IDC noted that moderating growth rates reflect a larger market base rather than slowing demand. After spending more than doubled in 2025, even lower percentage growth translates into significant incremental investment.
Hyperscalers and large enterprises remain in a capacity expansion cycle to support generative AI training and large-scale inference workloads.
Risks That Could Slow AI Infrastructure Expansion
Despite strong momentum, IDC identified several risks that could impact future growth:
- Power generation capacity is emerging as the main bottleneck for deploying GPU servers at scale.
- Rising electricity costs could influence site selection and delay data center commissioning.
- Increasing costs and limited availability of memory and storage components may raise server costs.
- Regulatory and data sovereignty requirements could reshape where infrastructure is built and who secures enterprise contracts.
Outlook
The record Q3 performance signals long-term confidence in AI infrastructure investment. As generative AI adoption accelerates across consumer, enterprise, and research sectors, hyperscalers and technology providers are expected to continue expanding global capacity to support the next phase of AI-driven digital transformation.
RAJANI BABURAJAN
