Data Center Capex Grew 92 Percent in 2Q 2026, Driven by Surging AI Demand and Memory Costs, According to Dell'Oro Group

US and China Hyperscalers Double Spending as Server Costs Rise

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Sept. 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- According to a recently published report by Dell'Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, the worldwide data center capital expenditures accelerated sharply in 2Q 2026. Continued AI infrastructure investment supported growth across compute, storage, networking, and physical infrastructure, while rising memory and storage prices significantly increased server average selling prices.

"Data center capex growth broadened in the second quarter as investment accelerated across both established Cloud service providers and emerging AI infrastructure customers," said Baron Fung, Vice President of Research at Dell'Oro Group. "Spending remained concentrated in NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra and hyperscaler custom accelerators, while agentic AI created incremental demand for general-purpose compute, storage, and complementary networking. Neocloud providers and AI model builders are also becoming increasingly important contributors to infrastructure investment. These companies are rapidly expanding their own capacity while deepening partnerships with cloud service providers.

"Looking ahead, ongoing accelerator deployments and emerging agentic AI and AI-related storage workloads should sustain strong capex growth through the remainder of 2026 and beyond, although supply constraints could limit the pace at which planned infrastructure is deployed," explained Fung.

Additional highlights from the 2Q 2026 Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Report:

• Neocloud and AI Model Builder capex grew the fastest among the customer segments, reflecting the early stages of their infrastructure buildouts.
• Higher memory and storage prices provided an additional lift to capex by driving server average selling prices higher.
• Dell led server OEM revenue, followed by Supermicro and Lenovo, while white-box server revenue reached a record high.

About the Report

Dell'Oro Group's Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Report details the data center infrastructure capital expenditures of the largest hyperscale cloud service providers, AI Model Builders, Neocloud, Rest of Cloud, Telco, and Enterprise customer segments. It provides the allocation of data center infrastructure capex for general-purpose and accelerated servers, storage systems, and other auxiliary data center equipment. The report also discusses market trends, drivers of the leading cloud service providers' capex growth during the quarter, and the outlook for the next year. To purchase this report, please contact us at dgsales@delloro.com.

About Dell'Oro Group

Dell'Oro Group is a market research firm that specializes in strategic competitive analysis in the telecommunications, security, enterprise networks infrastructure, and data center markets. Our firm provides in-depth quantitative data and qualitative analysis to facilitate critical, fact-based business decisions. For more information, contact Dell'Oro Group at +1.650.622.9400 or visit www.delloro.com.

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SOURCE Dell'Oro Group