TrendForce raised AI server shipment forecasts to 31% YoY growth in 2026, with hyperscaler capex surging 90% year-over-year to fuel infrastructure expansion.
Surging investment in AI infrastructure is expected to drive the combined capital expenditures of the world's nine largest cloud service providers up by approximately 90% year-over-year in 2026, according to TrendForce's latest AI server research.
Procurement demand for NVIDIA GB/VR rack-scale AI server platforms has strengthened noticeably among hyperscale CSPs and Tier-2 data center operators. Google and AWS are set to ramp production of their next-generation in-house ASIC platforms during the second half of 2026, while Chinese CSPs are accelerating deployment of domestic AI solutions to support large language model services. On the basis of these developments, TrendForce has revised its 2026 AI server shipment forecast upward from 28% to nearly 31% year-over-year.
TrendForce estimates that the combined 2026 CapEx of Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle, ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu will exceed $886.7 billion, with the five North American hyperscalers accounting for nearly 90%. This spending reflects continued investment in AI data centers, GPU clusters, liquid-cooling infrastructure, and other next-generation AI infrastructure required to support rapidly growing demand for generative AI and large-scale models.
Among North American providers, Google remains focused on expanding TPU deployment throughout 2026 and 2027, with shipments expected to grow rapidly. AWS plans to deploy the NVIDIA GB300 as its primary GPU AI server platform in 2026 while steadily expanding shipments of its internally developed ASICs, with further volume growth anticipated in 2027. Meta will rely primarily on NVIDIA GB/VR and AMD Helios rack-scale systems in 2026, while significantly accelerating deployment of its proprietary AI ASICs in 2027 as part of a long-term strategy to reduce infrastructure costs and improve inference efficiency.
China's four largest CSPs—ByteDance, Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu—are entering a new investment cycle. TrendForce forecasts their combined CapEx will increase by more than 80% year-over-year in 2026, with ByteDance expected to post the largest increase. Investment will focus primarily on large-scale AI data centers, proprietary ASIC development, and GPU cluster deployment.
Looking ahead to 2027, TrendForce estimates the combined CapEx of the top nine CSPs will reach approximately $1.3 trillion, representing nearly 50% year-over-year growth. While the growth rate may moderate due to a higher comparison baseline, this does not indicate a decline in AI investment. Ongoing developments in AI inference, agentic AI, custom ASICs, and next-generation AI models will continue fueling strong demand for computing infrastructure. As a result, CSP investments are likely to reach record levels, expanding beyond GPU deployment to include upgrades across AI servers, liquid cooling, advanced packaging, high-speed interconnects, power infrastructure, and memory.