Worldwide spending on edge computing reached $265 billion last year, according to the latest data from IDC, with that figure expected to grow by another 15% up to 2029 to reach $450 billion. 

Tracking the market, IDC’s Worldwide Edge Spending Guide predicts that this staggering growth in edge spending will be fueled by enterprise use cases spanning six domains: AI, IoT, AR, VR, drones, and robotics, with AI in particular being the fastest‑growing domain in the forecast.

IDC said that as organisations deploy more AI‑driven applications requiring instant processing, real‑time context, and resilient architectures, edge computing will soon emerge as a cornerstone of enterprise innovation.

For now, hardware is expected to retain the largest share of investment, driven by demand for AI‑optimised infrastructure and advanced edge platforms to support the next wave of technologies.

According to IDC, this concentration on hardware is a sign that enterprises are focused on building their computing power where data is generated, especially as AI workloads grow more demanding.

However, IDC expects that by 2029, companies will spend more on services than on hardware for edge computing. Within provisioned services, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is predicted to remain the fastest‑growing category as organisations look for scalable and cost‑efficient ways to support AI‑heavy edge workloads.

As more workloads shift toward distributed and AI‑enabled environments, IDC said that as‑a‑service offerings will provide a critical foundation for managing capacity, optimising costs, and accelerating deployment across diverse use cases.

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Service providers themselves are expected to ramp up spending on AI‑ready edge platforms like MEC, CDNs, and virtualised network functions, with IDC predicting that by 2029, these technologies will account for nearly a third of the whole market.

“The combination of maturing edge architectures and rapid AI development is fundamentally redefining how organisations process and act on data,” said Alexandra Rotaru, data and analytics manager at IDC. 

“We see enterprises and service providers shifting toward intelligent, distributed systems capable of real‑time decisioning and automation at scale. Edge AI is no longer experimental, its impact is already visible across industrial automation, smart retail, connected vehicles, and next‑generation healthcare.”

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