Worldwide AI Spending to Total $4 Trillion in 2027

Global spending on AI infrastructure is projected to total $2.4 trillion in 2027, an increase of 53% from 2026. Total global AI spending is expected to reach $4 trillion in 2027, a 47.5% increase from 2026.

“Faster than anticipated expansion of user requirements into scaling up inference workloads, coupled with increasingly compute-intensive training workloads, continues to increase spending on AI infrastructure globally,” said John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst, Chief of Research at Gartner.

Spending on AI-optimized servers, the largest segment of AI infrastructure spending, is expected to increase from $527.6 billion in 2026 to $957.2 billion in 2027. Growth is being driven by the continued build out of AI infrastructure by hyperscalers and neocloud providers as well as the ongoing ‘memflation’ of AI-optimized server prices.”

“Services vendors are helping organizations scale AI initiatives through strategy, data preparation, integration and ongoing deployment. At the same time, organizations are boosting their software spending as vendors add AI capabilities to existing products and investing in new platforms that manage and govern AI across the business,” said Lovelock.

Gartner analysts are discussing AI trends at Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo taking place here this week.

Gartner forecasts that worldwide spending on AI services will increase 29.5% in 2027, while spending on AI software is forecast to grow 42% (see Table 1).

Table 1: Worldwide AI Spending by Market, 2026-2027 (Billions of U.S. Dollars)

Source: Gartner (November 2026)

Foundation Models Command Largest Share of GenAI Model Spending

The GenAI model market is entering a period of sustained expansion, with total spending projected to reach $51 billion in 2027, an increase of 82% from 2026. As organizations scale AI across business functions, spending is being driven by rising demand for agentic AI, multimodal applications and industry-specific intelligence, enabling increasingly complex business workflows.

“While adoption of domain-specific and specialized AI models is accelerating, with spending projected to grow 99% in 2027, foundation GenAI models will continue to account for the largest share of model spending, reaching 81% in 2027,” said Lovelock.

Organizations are increasingly turning to domain-specific models to improve accuracy, contextual relevance and business outcomes in targeted use cases. “However, foundation models remain the backbone of AI adoption, providing the core intelligence that powers a growing ecosystem of AI agents, industry-specific models and enterprise AI applications,” said Lovelock.