- Inference-Driven AI Infrastructure Spending to Grow 55% in 2026
- AI-Optimized IaaS Spending to Increase 56.5% in 2027
The market is forecast to sustain high growth and reach $66 billion in 2027 (see Table 1).
Table 1: Spending on Infrastructure as a Service, Worldwide, 2025-2027 (Millions of Dollars)
|
Segment |
2025 Spending |
2025 Growth (%) |
2026 Spending |
2026 Growth (%) |
2027 Spending |
2027 Growth (%) |
| Total AI-optimized IaaS |
21,529 |
180.0 |
42,276 |
96.4 |
66,143 |
56.5 |
| Total IaaS | 222,170 | 25.3 | 287,347 | 29.3 | 359,899 | 25.2 |
Source: Gartner (August 2026)
“As organizations shift from model development to production-scale deployment, fine-tuned and domain-specific models (DSMs) are increasingly integrated into customer-facing and operational systems, requiring continuous, real-time execution rather than periodic training,” said Singh. “This shift is accelerating the cloud consumption patterns and creating sustained demand for AI-optimized infrastructure.”
In 2026, global spending on inference ($23.3 billion) will surpass that of training ($19 billion). Fifty-five percent of AI-optimized IaaS spending is forecast to support inference in 2026 and is set to reach 59% in 2027. The growing share of inference workloads is expected to reshape cloud investment priorities.
