Global data centre capital expenditures (capex) rocketed to $455 billion in 2024. A stratospheric rise of 51% compared to the previous year, according to a recent report by Dell’Oro Group.
The surge was primarily driven by increased investments in AI training infrastructure, which saw a staggering 161% growth.
Hyperscale cloud providers dominated the spending landscape, with the top 10 companies accounting for more than half of the total data centre capex.
“The accelerated investments in AI infrastructure were largely led by hyperscalers deploying optimised servers for AI training workloads,” said Baron Fung, senior research director at Dell’Oro Group.
NVIDIA’s Hopper architecture led the market throughout most of 2024, with further growth spurred by the adoption of its Blackwell systems later in the year.
Alongside NVIDIA’s dominance, custom AI accelerators from industry giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft contributed to the expansion.
Tier 2 cloud providers such as Elon Musk’s xAI and CoreWeave also saw massive growth in capex, approaching hyperscaler levels as they rapidly increased their GPU deployments.
The upward trend is expected to continue into 2025, with global data centre capex projected to grow by over 30%.
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