The amount of money the business sector pours into IT devices, services, and solutions has exploded over the past five years and continues to rise even after the Covid-19 tech boom.
With companies and organisations rushing to upgrade everything from automation and cybersecurity to cloud infrastructure and AI, technology has become the core of their competitiveness, pushing global IT budgets to record highs.
According to data presented by Jemlit.com, the latest forecasts show global IT spending is set to jump over $6 trillion in 2026, marking nearly a 60% increase in just six years.
Ever since the Covid-19 pandemic, which significantly speeded up the digitalisation of the business sector, global IT spending has been moving at warp speed.
While some expected the initial Covid-19 boom to fade eventually, what started as a must-do during lockdowns was followed by a major technological leap in data centres, cloud, automation, and AI, turning the surge in spending into an ongoing trend.
Since 2020, companies and organisations worldwide have spent tens of trillions of dollars on IT devices, services, and solutions, and their annual budgets continue growing faster than ever.
According to the latest Gartner forecast, global IT spending will hit an all-time high of over $6-trillion in 2026, growing by almost 10% in a single year, which is the second-highest annual increase after the 13% record set in 2021.
Moreover, this half-a-trillion-dollar spending growth will push the six-year increase to a massive 57%. That means the world will spend $2,2-trillion more on IT services and solutions in 2026 than it did back in 2020.
The scale of this growth becomes even more striking when compared to the 15 years before. Between 2005 and 2020, global IT spending increased by 46%. While quite impressive figure, that is still 11% less than the expected six-year growth between 2020 and 2026.
With annual IT budgets reaching a record $6-trillion in 2026, cumulative spending since 2020, when the global tech race started, will hit shocking levels. With another $6-trillion poured into the market, the six-year total will hit a mind-blowing $34,2-trillion.
To put that figure into perspective, that is enough money to buy every Big tech company, including Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta, almost twice, as their combined market cap now stands at around $35-trillion. That $34,2-trillion is also enough to cover roughly 30 years of global cybersecurity spending at current levels of $196-billion annually.