A new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide AI and Generative AI Spending Guide revealed that worldwide spending on artificial intelligence (AI) will more than double by 2028, reaching $632 billion with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.0% over the 2024-2028 forecast period.
"AI-powered transformations have delivered tangible business outcomes and value for organisations worldwide, and they are building their AI strategies around employee experience, customer engagement, business process, and industry innovations," said Ritu Jyoti, group vice president and general manager of AI and Data Research at IDC.
GenAI
Spending on GenAI solutions will be less than the combined total of all other AI applications, such as machine learning, deep learning, and automatic speech recognition & natural language processing. However, IDC expects GenAI spending to reach $202 billion, representing 32% of overall AI spending, with a five-year CAGR of 59.2% by the end of the forecast period.
Spending forecasts
Software will be the largest category of technology spending, followed by AI hardware, including servers, storage, and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS).
IDC expects the financial services industry to spend the most on AI solutions over the 2024-2028 forecast period.
For most of the forecast, AI infrastructure provisioning will be the leading use case for AI solutions. IDC expects several other use cases to catch or overtake it, including Augmented Fraud Analysis and Investigation and AI-enabled Customer Service and Self-Service.
China and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) are the third and fourth largest geographic regions for AI spending, next to the United States and Western Europe.
