Dell’Oro: Global Data Center Capex will Exceed $1 Trillion for the Year
According to the latest report from the Dell’Oro Group, the forecast for global data center capital expenditures (Capex) in 2026 has been revised upward, driven by accelerated large-scale AI deployments, alongside sustained investments in general infrastructure and rising component costs.
Baron Fung, Senior Research Director at Dell’Oro Group, stated: “This quarter, the rise in memory and storage prices significantly increased the overall cost of server systems, and this is likely to remain a primary driver of capital expenditure growth this year. Meanwhile, the deployment of AI infrastructure continues to accelerate rapidly, while hyperscale cloud providers have expanded their general-purpose infrastructure to support public cloud growth, AI agent workloads, and the growing demand for AI-related storage.”
Fung explained, “Despite exceptionally strong spending growth in the first half of 2026, capital expenditures are expected to accelerate further in the second half as NVIDIA’s Rubin system advances and hyperscale cloud providers update their custom accelerator platforms. Beyond hyperscale cloud providers, some enterprise verticals and sovereign cloud providers are also increasing AI infrastructure adoption. However, growth remains constrained due to uncertain returns and insufficient infrastructure readiness. Although demand remains robust in the near term, some spending may have been advanced before anticipated price increases later this year.”
According to the other highlights in the first quarter of 2026 IT capital expenditure report for data centers:
Global data center capital expenditure forecasts have been revised upward, exceeding $1 trillion for the entire year of 2026.
The capital expenditures for data centers by the top four U.S. cloud providers—Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—increased by 78%.
Among server OEM manufacturers, Dell led in revenue this quarter, followed by Supermicro and Lenovo, while white-box vendors serving the hyperscale market accounted for the majority of server revenue. Almost all server manufacturers benefited from the price increase driven by memory.
Regarding the report
The Dell’Oro Group’s quarterly report on IT capital expenditures for data centers provides a detailed breakdown of capital spending on data center infrastructure by the top ten cloud service providers, “other clouds,” telecommunications, and enterprise customer segments. The report includes the allocation of capital expenditures for data center infrastructure across general-purpose and accelerated servers, storage systems, and other auxiliary data center equipment. It also discusses market trends, drivers behind the quarterly capital expenditure growth of major cloud service providers, and outlook for the following year.
About Dell’Oro Group
Dell’Oro Group is a market research firm specializing in strategic competitive analysis of the telecommunications, security, enterprise network infrastructure, and data center markets. It provides in-depth quantitative data and qualitative analysis to support fact-based critical business decisions.