“The four largest US cloud service providers — Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft — continue to raise their data center capex expectations for 2025, supported by increased investments in both AI and general-purpose infrastructure. Oracle is also on track to double its data center capex this year as it expands capacity for Project Stargate,” said Baron Fung, Senior Director of Research at Dell’Oro Group.
“What’s remarkable about this cycle is not just the pace of spending, but the expansion of its scope, as cloud providers simultaneously scale accelerated computing, general-purpose servers, and the infrastructure needed to deploy AI at production scale. Spending on accelerated servers surged during the quarter, driven by the ramp-up of NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra, along with custom accelerator platforms from US hyperscalers, new cloud providers, and sovereign AI deployments. At the same time, cloud providers are placing greater emphasis on tighter capex discipline by optimizing depreciation and asset lifecycles to ensure healthy cash flow,” explained Fung.
Additional highlights from the Q3 2025 Capex IT for Data Centers report:
The global data center capex growth forecast was raised through 2026, reflecting sustained investment by hyperscalers and the continued prioritization of AI infrastructure.
Demand for general-purpose servers strengthened as cloud providers expanded compute and storage capacity to support growing cloud services and inference-intensive AI workloads.
Dell led server manufacturers in revenue, followed by HPE and Lenovo, gaining market share thanks to strong NVIDIA Blackwell shipments and a refreshed x86 portfolio, while white-box manufacturers captured the majority of shipments, supported by hyperscale AI deployments and strong demand for general-purpose servers.
