The Zhitong Finance App learned that according to TrendForce Jibang Consulting's latest AI Server (AI server) industry research, when large-scale cloud service providers (CSPs) expand their investment in servers and AI infrastructure, the total capital expenditure of the top nine global CSP is expected to exceed US$957 billion in 2026, an annual increase of 106%; in 2027, it is expected to exceed US$1.5 trillion, an annual increase of 60%, all better than previous expectations.
TrendForce Jibang Consulting said that the nine major CSPs include Google (GOOGL.US), Amazon (AMZN.US), Meta (META.US), Microsoft (MSFT.US), Oracle (ORCL.US), as well as ByteDance (ByteDance), Tencent (00700), Alibaba (09988), and Baidu (Baidu). This time, the total capital expenditure of the nine major manufacturers was raised from 50% to 60% per year, mainly reflecting three factors: first, the expected increase in server prices; second, an increase in related prices due to lack of spare parts; and third, some parts suppliers require customers to pay in advance to ensure delivery. As a result, CSP needs to spend cash early.
Strong procurement is driven by abundant capital. AI server shipment growth is expected to expand to nearly 36% in 2027
With CSP investment unabated, demand for AI server delivery is heating up at the same time. In addition to large-scale CSPs, tier-2 data center vendors such as Tesla (Tesla) and CoreWeave have also continued to buy AI servers recently. Considering the strong growth in overall demand, TrendForce Jibang Consulting recently estimated that AI Server shipments will increase by 32.2% per year in 2026. Looking ahead to 2027, the AI market is still driven by large-scale CSPs. In addition, Neocloud, sovereign AI projects, and large language model manufacturers are introducing new AI models and application services to further increase their efforts to collect goods. It is expected that AI Server shipments will increase by nearly 36% next year.
From the perspective of output value, AI Server is expected to generate an output value of about 479 billion US dollars in 2026 with high unit prices and steady shipping performance, accounting for nearly 75% of the total output value of servers (including general-purpose servers and AI servers) of about 639.2 billion US dollars.
In 2027, terminal customer orders will be dominated by full-cabinet solutions such as the NVIDIA (Nvidia) GB300, VR200, and AMD (Super Power) Helios series. Due to the shortage of key components, starting with memory, and rising prices, the average unit sales price of next-generation AI server cabinets will rise. It is estimated that next year, in addition to the overall server output value exceeding 1 trillion US dollars for the first time, AI Server output value will also jump to nearly 920 billion US dollars. The annual growth rate exceeds 90%. The share of server output increased to around 81%.