Global Artificial Intelligence Market: Spending, Segments and Business Adoption

This report measures the AI market as spending on AI-related products and services across IT markets, using Gartner's public forecast tables. It also tracks how widely businesses use AI, using McKinsey's global survey and the Stanford AI Index. Venture and private investment data is covered separately in the global AI investment report.

Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending of $2.7 trillion in 2026, a 49.5% increase year-over-year [1]. Its September 2026 table shows total AI spending of $1,786.7 billion in 2025, $2,670.5 billion in 2026 and $3,637.3 billion in 2027 [1].

Gartner's September 2026 forecast splits AI spending into nine markets [1]. The largest is AI infrastructure, forecast at $1,484.4 billion in 2026, which Gartner defines to include AI-optimized IaaS, AI-optimized servers, AI network fabric, AI processing semiconductors and devices [1]. That equals about 55.6% of total 2026 AI spending (FREEE.REPORT calculation).

• AI services: $434.0 billion in 2025, $576.5 billion in 2026 [1]
• AI software: $288.2 billion in 2025, $461.6 billion in 2026 [1]
• AI cybersecurity: $25.9 billion in 2025, $51.3 billion in 2026 [1]
• AI agents and assistants: $16.5 billion in 2025, $29.2 billion in 2026 [1]
• Generative AI models: $13.0 billion in 2025, $28.3 billion in 2026 [1]

Gartner expects AI services to become a $1.2 trillion opportunity by 2030 [1].

Gartner's earlier September 2025 forecast, which used a different market breakdown, put total AI spending at $987.9 billion in 2024 and nearly $1.5 trillion in 2025 [2]. On that basis, 2025 spending was about 49.7% above 2024 (FREEE.REPORT calculation). The 2025 figure was later revised to $1,786.7 billion in the September 2026 forecast, after Gartner changed its market definitions, including adding consumer agents and assistants [1].

Stanford's AI Index reports that corporate AI investment reached $252.3 billion in 2024, with private investment up 44.5% and mergers and acquisitions up 12.1% from the previous year [3]. Total corporate AI investment has grown more than thirteenfold since 2014 [3].

In McKinsey's 2025 global survey, 88% of respondents said their organisations regularly use AI in at least one business function, compared with 78% a year earlier [4]. Most are still in experimenting or piloting stages at the enterprise level [4]. Stanford's AI Index, drawing on the same survey series, reports that the share was 55% in 2023 [3].

The gains so far are modest for most firms. Among respondents using AI in service operations, 49% report cost savings, but most of them report savings of less than 10% [3]. In marketing and sales, 71% report revenue gains, with the most common increase below 5% [3].

By region, North America leads in organisational AI use, while Greater China recorded a 27 percentage point increase and Europe a 23 percentage point increase in 2024 [3].

Gartner attributes growth mainly to hyperscalers and service providers buying AI-optimized servers, which it expects to remain the largest single area of spending [1]. Software vendors are embedding agentic AI into existing products, and enterprises are adopting these embedded features from incumbent providers [1]. Gartner also notes that AI infrastructure demand has stayed strong despite memory-related price increases [1].

Market size figures come from Gartner's public press release tables, in millions of US dollars, converted to billions here. Values for 2026 and 2027 are forecasts. The 2025 value in the September 2026 table is Gartner's latest estimate. Gartner's September 2025 and September 2026 tables use different market definitions, so their figures are not directly comparable.

FREEE.REPORT calculations: infrastructure share of 2026 spending = $1,484,397 million / $2,670,460 million; 2025 vs 2024 growth = $1,478,634 million / $987,904 million - 1, from the September 2025 table.

Adoption shares are survey results from McKinsey's Global Survey on the state of AI and are not a census of all firms. Corporate investment is from Stanford HAI's AI Index 2025.