IT spending throughout the world is expected to grow by 7.9 percent in 2025. A Gartner report says that the total worldwide IT spending will reach $5.43 trillion this year. Last year, IT spending growth was 7.4 percent and totalled $5.03 trillion in 2024.
There has been a brief pause in the net-new spending in the second quarter of this year—2025. The uncertainties in the global corporate sector have impacted the growth of software and IT services; however, the continued generative AI-led spending has improved the overall IT sector spending in the year.
“While there is a business pause on net-new spending due to a spike in global uncertainty, the effect is subsumed by ongoing AI and generative AI (GenAI) digitisation initiatives,” said John-David Lovelock – VP, Analyst at Gartner.
Software and IT Services’ performance
Worldwide software spending in 2025 is expected to reach $1.23 trillion. While the sector has grown by 10.5 percent compared to last year, when the spending was at $1.11 trillion. However, last year, the software sector posted an 11.9 percent YoY growth in spending.
Similarly IT services sector has also seen its spending growth slow down from 4.8 percent in 2024 to 4.4 percent. According to Gartner’s report, the total spending in the IT services sector is expected to reach $1.68 trillion in 2025.
Data Centres and AI spending
The data centres’ spending, led by generative AI, has grown by 42.4 percent. The total spending in data centres is expected to reach $474 billion this year. Last year, total spending in data centres was $333 billion. However, the spending patterns in AI have changed over the years.
“With GenAI sliding towards the trough of disillusionment, more time and spending is being focused on delivered functionality from incumbent software providers,” said Lovelock. “CIOs are looking towards more ‘plug and play’ simple use cases as they are being sold GenAI functionality, but not necessarily buying the functionality.”