Hyperscalers and AI Model Developers Expected to Sustain Strong Capex Momentum in 2026
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — According to a recently published report by Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, worldwide data center capital expenditures increased 57 percent in 2025 as AI deployments, complemented by general infrastructure investments, accelerated. We project hyperscalers and AI model developers to sustain strong capex momentum in 2026.
“The Top 4 US cloud service providers—Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—increased data center capex by 76 percent in 2025. Oracle more than tripled its data center capex as it builds capacity for the Stargate project,” said Baron Fung, Senior Research Director at Dell’Oro Group.
“This growth was supported by AI infrastructure build-outs and additional investments in general-purpose servers and storage to support both AI and cloud workloads. We forecast full-year 2026 data center capex to surpass $1 trillion. The trillion-dollar threshold marks a major milestone, supported by well over 10 M high-end accelerators as the primary capex driver, along with related infrastructure.
Most AI-related investments support the hyperscalers’ internal frontier models, though there have been increasing investments to support AI model developers’ ambitions. While a significant portion of AI investments supports training workloads, inferencing will likely become a larger capex driver going forward, especially as token-hungry reasoning models become more widespread. This heightened level of investment raises the potential for overcapacity in AI infrastructure, although hyperscalers are taking proactive measures to mitigate risks and optimize costs,” explained Fung.
Additional highlights from the 4Q 2025 Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Report:
- The global data center capex growth outlook to increase by more than 50 percent in 2026.
- We project general-purpose server average selling prices to increase by high double digits in 2026, with escalating DRAM and storage prices as the primary growth driver.
- Dell led all OEMs in AI-optimized server revenue in 2025, followed by Supermicro, driven by strong NVIDIA Blackwell shipments. White-box vendors captured the majority of server shipments, supported by hyperscale AI deployments for Blackwell and custom systems, as well as a surge in general-purpose server demand for compute and storage workloads.
About the Report
Dell’Oro Group’s Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Report details the data center infrastructure capital expenditures of each of the ten largest Cloud service providers, as well as the Rest-of-Cloud, Telco, and Enterprise customer segments. Allocation of the data center infrastructure capex for general-purpose and accelerated servers, storage systems, and other auxiliary data center equipment is provided. The report also discusses market trends, drivers of the leading Cloud service providers’ capex growth during the quarter, and the outlook for the next year. To purchase this report, please contact us at [email protected].
About Dell’Oro Group
Dell’Oro Group is a market research firm that specializes in strategic competitive analysis in the telecommunications, security, enterprise networks infrastructure, and data center markets. Our firm provides in-depth quantitative data and qualitative analysis to facilitate critical, fact-based business decisions. For more information, contact Dell’Oro Group at +1.650.622.9400 or visit www.delloro.com.
SOURCE Dell’Oro Group
