Global data center capex surged 51 percent to $455 billion in 2024, according to a new report from Dell’Oro Group. Accelerated servers optimized for AI training workloads deployed by the hyperscalers accounted for most of the growth.
“The top 10 hyperscalers accounted for more than half of global data center capex in 2024, driven largely by heightened investments in AI infrastructure,” said Baron Fung, Sr. Research Director at Dell’Oro Group. “While NVIDIA’s Hopper architecture—followed by Blackwell systems later in the year—dominated spending, custom accelerators from Google, Amazon, and Microsoft also fueled growth. Additionally, Tier 2 cloud providers like xAI and CoreWeave significantly ramped up their capex, approaching hyperscaler levels due to increased GPU deployments. Hyperscalers and colocation providers also expanded investments in infrastructure, including dedicated AI networks and high-power facilities to support these compute-intensive workloads,” explained Fung.
Additional highlights from the 4Q 2024 Data Center IT Capex Quarterly Report:
- Global data center capex is projected to rise by more than 30 percent in 2025, with sustained demand on AI infrastructure and a broader recovery in general-purpose infrastructure for servers and networking.
- Dell led all OEMs in server revenue for 2024, with HPE and Supermicro trailing behind. Accelerated servers accounted for an estimated 36 percent of OEM server revenue as AI adoption expanded in the non-hyperscale market. Meanwhile, white-box server vendors captured over 56 percent of total server revenue, driven by strong hyperscale demand for AI servers.
- Ongoing economic uncertainties may curb enterprise IT spending, while supply constraints and the rise of cloud and consumption-based services could result in near-term fluctuations in AI investments within enterprise data centers.