Gartner: AI Infrastructure Spending Nears One Trillion Dollars as Customers Foot the Bill

Technology companies' spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure is approaching one trillion dollars this year, and the global IT market is set to grow to a record $6.37 trillion, according to Gartner's latest forecast. The firm's analysts warn that the costs of this massive investment are increasingly showing up on corporate customers' invoices.

Behind the forecast is John-David Lovelock, Gartner's vice president responsible for IT market analysis. In his view, the scale of the AI infrastructure buildout is unprecedented in the modern economy.

Building AI infrastructure is the largest infrastructure undertaking in human history, surpassing America's highways, Europe's railways, the Great Wall of China and the International Space Station combined - John-David Lovelock, Gartner Vice President

Where the money comes from

The figures Gartner cites line up with what the financial reports of the biggest tech companies have shown for months. Alphabet has budgeted $175 to $185 billion in capital expenditures for 2026, concentrated on data centers, while Amazon projects capex of around $200 billion. According to Synergy Research data, hyperscale operators' quarterly capital spending has grown nearly 180 percent over three years, reaching $142 billion in the third quarter of 2025.

Analyst firm Dell'Oro Group forecasts that data center investment will reach $1.7 trillion by 2030, up from about $1 trillion in 2026. Synergy Research has already identified 770 future hyperscale-class data centers at various stages of planning and construction.

Who foots the bill

Gartner points out that the costs of this massive infrastructure expansion aren't staying with cloud providers. Software makers integrating AI features through partnerships with model developers such as OpenAI or Anthropic are systematically raising license prices. IT directors at companies report growing concern over price increases spanning nearly their entire vendor portfolio, not just products directly built on AI.

The pricing pressure is already visible in the cloud segment specifically. German operator Hetzner has raised cloud service prices by as much as 37 percent since April 2026, citing rising hardware costs and a sharp increase in DRAM memory prices driven by the AI boom. French provider OVHcloud has announced increases of 5-10 percent between April and September this year. Microsoft raised the price of its base Microsoft 365 Business Basic package from $6 to $7 per user per month, a 16 percent increase.

Customer pushback

Gartner's analysis reveals an interesting asymmetry: it is mainly IT service providers offering AI-based solutions that face direct customer resistance to price hikes. Companies more readily accept higher prices for base infrastructure, but find it much harder to accept surcharges for AI features whose business value can be difficult to demonstrate.

This fits into a broader trend of uncertainty over AI return on investment, also flagged by other market analyses in recent months. More and more CFOs say they are betting on artificial intelligence but cannot clearly show that the investment is paying off.

What it means for Poland

For Polish companies relying on foreign cloud and software providers, this translates into real pressure on IT budgets in the coming quarters. Rising prices for Microsoft licenses, cloud services and AI-based development tools feed directly into the cost of doing business, especially in the business services and IT sectors, where dependence on foreign platforms is high.

Gartner notes that despite the price increases, demand for AI infrastructure shows no sign of slowing, and tech companies have no plans to pull back on investment. That means pricing pressure on end customers is likely to persist rather than ease in the coming years.