Dell'Oro Group reports 59% rise in data center capex

Dell'Oro Group reported worldwide data center capital expenditures rose 59 percent year over year in third-quarter 2025, marking the eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth as Artificial Intelligence (AI) investment broadened beyond training-focused deployments.

The report found the Top 4 US cloud service providers—Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—raised data center Capital Expenditure (CAPEX) expectations for 2025, and Oracle was on track to double its data center CAPEX while it expanded capacity for the Stargate project; the report also noted increased investment in both AI and general-purpose infrastructure.

Accelerated server spending surged in the quarter, driven by the ramp of NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra and custom accelerator platforms across US hyperscalers, neo cloud providers, and sovereign AI deployments. Demand for general-purpose servers strengthened as cloud providers expanded compute and storage to support growing cloud services and inference-heavy AI workloads. Dell led all server OEMs in revenue, followed by HPE and Lenovo, while white-box vendors captured the majority of server shipments.

The Data Center IT CAPEX Quarterly Report detailed infrastructure CAPEX for the ten largest cloud service providers, the Rest-of-Cloud, Telco, and Enterprise customer segments, and provided allocations for general-purpose and accelerated servers, storage systems, and other auxiliary data center equipment; it also discussed market trends, drivers of leading cloud providers' CAPEX growth, and an outlook for the next year. To purchase this report, contact [email protected].

“The Top 4 US cloud service providers—Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft—continue to raise data center capex expectations for 2025, supported by increased investments in both AI and general-purpose infrastructure. Oracle is also on track to double its data center capex this year as it expands capacity for the Stargate project,” said Baron Fung, Senior Research Director at Dell'Oro Group.

The report raised the global data center CAPEX growth outlook through 2026.