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05

Gartner lifts 2026 AI spend forecast to $2.7 trillion, up 49.5%

incrementalConsultingFinance

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

Confidence

Medium · — Gartner primary; trade republishing only, no Tier-1 wire pickup yet.

Evidence

named-analyst forecast release

Gartner raised its worldwide AI spending forecast to $2.7 trillion in 2026, a 49.5% year-over-year increase, up from the 47% forecast it published in May.
  • AI application development platform growth was revised 28% to 39%.
  • Lovelock called the AI data-center buildout "the largest infrastructure project humanity has even undertaken."

Sources

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In this issue

  1. 01Google ships Gemini 3.8 Live for production voice agents
  2. 02Von der Leyen backs an AI slowdown and summons the frontier labs
  3. 03OpenAI's rogue agents probed Hugging Face two months before the hack
  4. 04OpenAI holds early talks on a $1.2 trillion pre-IPO round
  5. 05Gartner lifts 2026 AI spend forecast to $2.7 trillion, up 49.5%
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