2025 IT Budget Benchmarks
Global IT spending in 2025 was $5.58 trillion, up 10.7 percent year-on-year per Gartner's revised actuals. The year established the AI infrastructure investment pattern that 2026 has continued at a faster pace. Below are the segment actuals, regulatory milestones (DORA, EU AI Act, NIS2) and three lessons that shape 2026 planning.
Global IT Spending 2025 (Actual / Estimated)
$5.58T
Up 10.7 percent year-on-year. Source: Gartner July 2026 forecast release (revised 2025 actuals).
The Year That Established the AI Pattern
2025 was the year AI moved from boardroom theme to budget line item across most enterprises. Worldwide IT spending grew 10.7 percent per Gartner's revised actuals, and Gartner's October 2026 forecast puts 2026 at 14.5 percent. The acceleration is driven by AI infrastructure investment that, on Gartner's July 2026 numbers, is not slowing yet.
The AI investment wave is concentrated in three places. First, hyperscaler capex on AI-capable data centres (NVIDIA GPUs, supporting infrastructure). Second, AI-embedded SaaS adoption (Microsoft Copilot, Salesforce Einstein, GitHub Copilot) at scale, each priced as a per-user add-on on top of the base licence. Third, custom AI and machine learning workloads at companies building AI into their products.
For typical enterprises (not hyperscalers or AI-native start-ups), 2025 was the year AI line items appeared in IT budgets. Pilots that moved into production brought usage-driven cloud cost with them. That is the point at which FinOps practices start to matter.
2025 Segment Actuals
| Segment | 2025 Spend | Growth vs 2024 | What Happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| Data centre systems | $506B | +51.6% | AI infrastructure: hyperscaler server and data centre buildout. |
| Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) | $222B | +25.3% | Cloud compute scaling for AI workloads. Reported as a separate line by Gartner, not folded into IT services. |
| Devices | $790B | +9.7% | PCs, phones and tablets. |
| Software | $1.27T | +13.9% | AI-embedded SaaS, Microsoft Copilot enterprise rollouts at scale, Salesforce Einstein adoption. |
| IT services | $1.49T | +3.8% | AI implementation services, cloud migration, ongoing digital transformation. Largest segment. |
| Communications services | $1.30T | +3.3% | Stable mature segment. |
2025 Regulatory and Market Milestones
Six dated events through 2025 that shaped IT budgets. The regulatory milestones (DORA, EU AI Act phases, NIS2 transposition) added compliance spend at affected organisations. The market signals (cyber insurance pricing, CIO agentic AI plans) shifted where the next year's money was pointed.
DORA enforcement begins
Jan 2025Digital Operational Resilience Act becomes enforceable across all EU financial services. Affected firms had spent 2 years preparing.
EU AI Act prohibited practices effective
Feb 2025First operative phase of the AI Act. Bans on certain AI uses (real-time biometric identification in public spaces, social scoring, etc.).
Cyber insurance rates keep falling
Q1 2025Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index recorded cyber rates down 6 percent globally in Q1 2025, with declines in every region and 10 percent in Europe. Cheaper cover, but underwriters still expect core controls.
NIS2 infringement procedures escalate
May 2025The European Commission sent reasoned opinions to 19 member states that had still not fully transposed NIS2, following letters of formal notice to 23 in November 2024. National NIS2 obligations kept arriving at different dates across the EU.
EU AI Act general-purpose AI obligations effective
Aug 2025GPAI providers (OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta) face transparency and governance obligations. Indirect impact on enterprise AI users via vendor disclosures.
Gartner CIO survey: agentic AI plans
Oct 2025Gartner's 2026 CIO and Technology Executive Survey (more than 2,500 respondents) found 64 percent of technology executives plan to deploy agentic AI within the next 24 months, and expected AI investment to grow by more than 35 percent year-on-year.
Three Lessons for 2026 Planning
Three patterns from 2025 that are worth carrying into 2026 budget planning:
- AI pilots scale faster than expected, with cloud cost surprise.
An AI pilot that becomes a production workload changes its cost profile: inference and data costs scale with usage, not with the pilot budget. Organisations with FinOps practices and AI cost governance in place before rollout can see that growth as it happens; without them it shows up as an unbudgeted cloud bill. For 2026: build FinOps maturity ahead of AI scaling, not after. - Cyber insurance got cheaper; the control bar did not drop.
Marsh's Global Insurance Market Index for Q1 2025 recorded cyber rates down 6 percent globally, with declines in every region and 10 percent in Europe. Lower premiums are not a reason to cut the security line: underwriters still ask about controls such as MFA, endpoint detection and incident response plans. For 2026: treat the renewal questionnaire as a checklist of controls to fund, and bank any premium saving separately. - AI-skilled hiring needs its own line.
AI and data roles are priced differently from the rest of the engineering team, so a general salary-inflation assumption under-budgets them. For 2026: price each AI-skilled role from current market data for that role and location, put it in the personnel line as a named item, and compare it with the cost of upskilling existing staff.
Related Pages
IT Budget 2026 (Current)
$6.39T projected, 14.5 percent growth (Gartner, Oct 2026).
Spending Forecast Hub
Multi-year forecast view and segment trends.
Cybersecurity Budget
Security share of the IT budget, 2024 vs 2025.
Cloud Spending
FinOps maturity after the 2025 AI cost wave.
European IT Budget
DORA, EU AI Act, NIS2 cost lines.
IT Staffing Costs
Salary inputs and IT staffing cost lines.
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