Global spending on building and expanding data centres is expected to reach $1.7 trillion by 2030, according to new research from Dell’Oro Group, with investment driven by hyperscale AI firms and neo cloud service providers.

Based on soaring investments at the beginning of the year, the research firm’s latest Data Center IT Capex 5-Year Forecast Report projects that global data centre capex will approach $1 trillion by the close of 2026, hitting a major industry milestone sooner than anticipated.

According to Dell’Oro, this forecast rests on the skyrocketing capex announcements of the top four US hyperscale cloud providers, Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft, which together raised their data centre capex to nearly $600 billion entering 2026.

Added to that, frontier AI firms, neo cloud providers, and sovereign cloud initiatives have all accelerated their own data centre deployment, adding more fuel to an already red-hot investment cycle, one which potentially signals a new phase of infrastructure expansion despite lingering fears of an AI bubble.

However, the report noted that, outside of these hyperscale firms, enterprise data centre investment will likely remain constrained by tariffs, monetary policy, and uncertain AI returns.

“Despite increased scrutiny around AI infrastructure returns, hyperscalers continue to invest aggressively, supported by large cash reserves and a long-term focus on market share,” said Baron Fung, senior research director at Dell’Oro Group.

“This growth is being driven by the deployment of larger and more complex AI clusters, which are increasing demand for high-performance networking, storage, inference capacity, and advanced power and cooling infrastructure.”

Likewise, the market research firm also forecast that the global server and storage semiconductor and component market, and more specifically data centre accelerators, will soon enter a new phase of expansion driven by AI. 

On that basis, Dell’Oro projects that the data centre accelerator market will grow at a 25% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) over the next five years, supported by the adoption of AI applications that require specialised, accelerator-equipped infrastructure.

Recommended reading

• Data Centres Are the World’s Hottest Property Investment
• European Data Centre Market Expands, But Will Energy Demand Hold It Back?
• Are Traditional Data Centres Fit For Purpose?
  

Hyperscale service providers are increasingly deploying custom accelerators to improve efficiency, and hopefully reduce costs, with Dell’Oro noting that engineering efforts are underway to improve accelerator performance per watt from the package level through to the rack level.

For now, merchant GPUs and custom accelerators will continue to dominate market spending, with custom accelerators gaining share as hyperscale cloud providers pursue greater efficiency and cost optimisation.

Growth in CPUs and front‑end NICs will remain in the single‑ to low‑double‑digit range, but heavy demand for memory and storage is likely to tighten supply, drive up costs, and incentivise vendors to design more resource‑efficient architectures that improve cost of ownership.