Worldwide IT spend will reach $5.43 trillion this year, an increase of 7.9% over 2024, and it comes at a time when CIOs appear to be pausing their net-new spending as a result of political uncertainty, according to Gartner’s latest forecast, released Tuesday.
Despite this, ongoing AI and generative AI (genAI) digitization initiatives are not being affected. “[While] both software and services spending growth in 2025 are expected to slow down due to this ‘uncertainty pause,’ spending in AI-related infrastructure, such as data center systems, continues to surge,” said John-David Lovelock, distinguished VP analyst with the research firm.
The forecast is segmented into five areas with wildly varying growth predictions: data center systems, expected to soar with 42.4% growth, devices, with predicted 5.4% growth, software, with growth expected to hit 10.5%, IT services, with 4.4% growth over last year, and communication services, predicted to grow by 2.1%.
