Global IT spending in 2025 will grow strongly

Global IT spending in 2025 will grow strongly, almost double digitsaccording to Gartner forecasts. As expected in the age of AI, hardware upgrades to support generative artificial intelligence systems will be responsible for much of the investment.

The consulting firm expects global IT spending to rise to 5.61 trillion dollars in 2025. It would be a year-on-year increase of 9.8%, although Gartner analysts put it in perspective: “While CIO budgets are increasing, a significant portion will simply offset Price increases within their recurring expenses”.

This means that in 2025 nominal versus real spending on IT will be somewhat skewed, with price increases absorbing some or all of the budget growth. All major categories are reflecting higher than expected prices, “which will prompt CIOs to postpone and reduce their actual budget expectations”they explain.

Global IT spending in 2025, by sector

Beyond the above, we see significant increases in all categoriesespecially in segments including data center systems, devices and software, which will see double-digit growth in 2025, largely due to generative AI hardware upgrades.

Despite the good prospects, the consultancy also expresses its reservations that these updated segments will not yet differentiate themselves in terms of functionality, even with new hardware: «GenAI (generative artificial intelligence) is approaching a point of disillusionment which is reflected in the fact that CIOs are reducing their expectations, although they are not reducing spending on this technology».

Gartner analysts give as an example the new PCs for AI, which are passing without pain or glory despite the very strong investment in marketing. And the Copilot+ do not have ‘essential’ applications that use the hardware. “While both consumers and businesses will purchase AI-enabled PCs, tablets and mobile phones, those purchases won’t be overly influenced by GenAI functionality«.

The investment in servers and data centers seems different, since Spending on AI-optimized servers will easily double spending on traditional servers by 2025reaching 202,000 million dollars. “IT services companies and hyperscalers will account for more than 70% of spending in 2025”they say.

The consulting firm also foresees good prospects for subsequent years: “By 2028, hyperscalers will operate $1 trillion worth of AI-optimized servers, but not within their traditional business model or IaaS market. “Hyperscalers are shifting to be part of the oligopolistic AI model market.”.