"According to Parks Associates, approximately 30 million U.S. households have a broadband connection, 50 million have either digital cable or direct broadcast satellite (DBS) television service, 18+ million households have a data networking solution, and 75% of U.S. households have a DVD player. As the number of advanced products and services increases, also boosting the number of companies involved in these digital markets, both the complexity and potential for these markets have escalated."
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...