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IDC Updates 2029 Infrastructure Spending Forecast

The Open Compute Project Foundation (OCP) has announced a substantial revision in the International Data Corporation (IDC) forecast regarding global spending on OCP-recognized IT infrastructure. The IDC's 2026 market impact study now anticipates annual expenditures reaching approximately $800 billion by 2029, a staggering 2.7 times higher than last year’s prediction of $295 billion for the same year. This immense growth underscores the evolving landscape of IT infrastructure driven by artificial intelligence (AI) investments and a broad adoption of OCP projects.

Future Projections

Looking beyond the immediate forecast, IDC also projects that spending will rise to $892 billion by 2030, with an estimated 51% of all infrastructure-related expenditures being linked to OCP standards. This represents a significant paradigm shift towards AI-supported infrastructure solutions as companies increasingly demand more robust systems to handle complex workloads.

Cliff Grossner, PhD, Director of Innovation at the OCP Foundation, notes that, "AI is transforming the needs of the industry concerning infrastructure, and these findings demonstrate the rising significance of open projects in meeting this demand. Our community is bringing companies together to address challenges across all data center aspects, from silicon and servers to cooling and power systems. This collaborative effort is essential for organizations looking to scale new technologies effectively."

Investment Insights

The influx of AI investment is a major driver behind the IDC's updated forecast. It indicates that spending on OCP-recognized IT infrastructure will surge from an approximate $154 billion in 2025 to $892 billion by 2030, translating to a 42% compound annual growth rate (CAGR).

Within this realm, servers remain the dominant category of spending, with considerable growth expected in graphic-accelerated systems. Moreover, IDC anticipates continued expansion in networking devices, rack infrastructure, power supply, and cooling technologies as organizations build systems capable of supporting increasingly demanding workloads.

Key Findings

• - $800 billion projected annual spending by 2029, increasing from the previous year's estimate of $295 billion.
• - $892 billion anticipated annual spending by 2030, with approximately $814 billion allocated to servers.
• - By 2030, approx. 51% of expenses in measured infrastructure categories will be on OCP-recognized frameworks.
• - Forecasted $628 billion AI-linked infrastructure spending by 2030, representing about 70% of total projections.

Ecosystem Growth and Collaboration

IDC emphasizes the burgeoning ecosystem of solution providers and the presence of open collaborative projects as critical factors fostering adoption. The application of OCP-recognized IT equipment extends beyond formal membership to organizations that access and implement these frameworks globally.

Working towards dissolving the barriers of proprietary systems, the results reinforce the expansive vision of the OCP open data center ecosystem, which addresses interrelated AI infrastructure needs from silicon to the network.

Over the past year, the OCP community has developed more powerful rack designs, liquid cooling systems, AI-based Ethernet networking, and open chiplet specifications. Their initiatives also include addressing power distribution through direct current (DC), energy storage solutions, and cooperation between data centers and the utility grid.

Strategically, the Foundation's “Open Data Center for AI” initiative consolidates efforts in power supply, cooling, and facility management. The OCP Energy project enhances collaboration in energy generation and storage, while the AI Computing Continuum project supports deployment beyond hyperscale data centers into corporate, regional, and edge environments.

As AI infrastructure evolves, OCP is committed to supporting diverse AI silicon, coordinating data center design, and developing open building blocks that organizations can deploy across a broader range of environments.

About the Research

The 2026 IDC market impact study commissioned by the OCP Foundation examines global spending on OCP-recognized IT infrastructure, encompassing servers, external storage, switches, IT racks, power supply, cooling, carriage equipment, and peripherals. The figures provided represent annual spending, and percentages are rounded off.

About the Open Compute Project Foundation

The Open Compute Project Foundation is dedicated to uniting the global data center and IT infrastructure community to develop open hardware projects, specifications, and best practices. OCP aids organizations in adopting innovations proven at hyperscale for broader market applicability through open collaboration. For more information, visit opencompute.org.