"Many mature service industries are in a service arms race in which they keep adding more and more services cumulatively over time. But consumers don't always want "more and more"�what they're looking for are unique combinations of attributes. You see that with the success of the airline JetBlue, for example: It has no meals and no round-trip airfares, but it does have leather seats and personal entertainment centers that delight and surprise its passengers. JetBlue's unique combination of features is what gives it a unique position in the market. "
Enterprise AI budgets are flowing in two directions at once, and only one of them builds an asset the buyer actually controls. Gartner's latest forecast puts worldwide AI spending at $2.7 trillion in 2026, but the composition of that figure matters far more than the total. Executives who read only the headline will miss the tension between what they are buying and what they actually own. The Number Behind the Number Gartner projects 2026 AI spending is a 49.5 percent increase over 2025, with $3.6 trillion forecast for 2027. AI infrastructure accounts for $1.5 trillion of this year's total, more than half. Gartner's John-David Lovelock calls the data center buildout the largest infrastructure project humanity has undertaken, and describes demand as inelastic even as memory prices climb. Compute Concentration is a Sovereignty Issue Gartner expects hyperscalers and service providers buying AI-optimized servers to remain the largest single area of spending. For an enterprise, t...