Digital Realty Survey Reports 59% of Asia Pacific Plans AI Spending Increases

Digital Realty released its 2026 Global Data Insights Survey, based on responses from IT decision-makers across 19 countries, including seven APAC markets. The survey described how AI investment plans translated into different priorities and deployment considerations across the region.

The APAC results showed variation in how organizations approached AI deployment and measurement. Overall, 59% of respondents in Asia Pacific expected their organizations to increase AI investment by more than 25% in 2026 versus 2025, compared with 55% globally. The findings also reported that 36% of respondents had identified repeatable, high-impact AI use cases and that a similar share reported measurable business outcomes from AI.

Australia reported higher adoption of AI ROI and real-time deployment than the wider APAC average. In Australia, 33% of organizations said they were realizing AI ROI, versus 16% across APAC, and 47% reported real-time AI in deployment compared with 36% across the region. Japan placed regulatory compliance for AI strategy and data privacy requirements at the top of its decision criteria, while Singapore emphasized infrastructure readiness and South Korea highlighted interconnection for connecting distributed data sources for AI execution.

Digital Realty reported that it surveyed 2,131 IT decision-makers across 19 countries, including 707 respondents across Australia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore and South Korea, and said the full report was available as “Global Data Insights Survey 2026.” Serene Nah, Managing Director and Head of APAC at Digital Realty, said, “AI investment is accelerating across APAC, and enterprises are entering the next phase with different priorities. As they scale AI, organizations are balancing priorities that range from demonstrating returns and preparing infrastructure to meeting compliance requirements and connecting distributed environments,” and “These differences matter for enterprises operating across the region. Infrastructure decisions need to reflect the requirements of each market and workload, while giving organizations the flexibility to connect and grow across APAC.” As AI deployment increased, Digital Realty reported that 92% of APAC respondents tied their data-location strategy to their AI plans and that 22% described their hybrid infrastructure as fully integrated.