AI Infrastructure Spend Spreads Beyond Hyperscalers
Enterprise and government buyers are driving a server market revenue surge despite rising component costs.
The server market is seeing a significant shift in buyer demographics as AI infrastructure spending expands past the largest cloud providers. According to reporting from The Register, market intelligence firm IDC found that vendor revenue hit a record $166.3 billion in the second quarter, marking a 52 percent increase over the previous year.
While hyperscalers and large cloud providers remain the primary demand drivers—with GPU-accelerated servers accounting for nearly 53 percent of Q2 revenue—IDC notes that adoption is broadening. Kuba Stolarski, IDC research vice president for Computing Platforms and Service Provider Infrastructure, stated that demand is moving toward enterprises adopting inferencing and agentic workloads, sovereign AI programs funded by public capital, and specialized "neocloud" providers.
This expansion persists despite rising average selling prices fueled by component supply issues and high memory costs. GPU-accelerated server prices rose nearly 44 percent to $170,200, while non-accelerated system prices climbed more than 33 percent to nearly $13,000.
This shift in demand is also altering the competitive landscape. The Register reports that traditional brand vendors are gaining ground against original design manufacturers (ODMs). While ODMs still hold a majority of the market, their share dropped from over 60 percent last year to 53.9 percent in Q2. Dell Technologies led the growth among brand vendors, increasing its market share from 7.7 percent a year ago to 13.4 percent. Other notable players include Supermicro at 6.1 percent, Lenovo at 5.1 percent, and HPE at 3.5 percent.