The worldwide server market reached $122.6 billion in vendor revenue in the first quarter of 2026, growing 30.4% year over year as companies increase spending on infrastructure needed to support artificial intelligence (AI) workloads, according to IDC’s Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker.
The growth shows that AI infrastructure is becoming a long-term investment rather than a short-term trend. Large cloud providers and technology companies continue to buy more AI-ready servers, while supply limits on key components such as memory chips and processors are slowing how quickly vendors can deliver more systems.
“AI infrastructure demand is broadening beyond hyperscalers into enterprise and sovereign deployments across more than 40 countries, while the non-accelerated segment faces a supply-driven pause, not a demand-driven slowdown,” said Juan Seminara, research director, Worldwide Enterprise Infrastructure Trackers, IDC.
Seminara also noted that companies aren’t pulling back from infrastructure investment; they’re just not getting servers as fast as they need them. Longer term, emerging workloads, including agentic applications and physical AI ecosystems, will keep demand elevated well beyond the current cycle.”
AI-focused servers accounted for a major share of the market, with GPU accelerated servers generating $68.9 billion in revenue, up 24.8% from a year earlier and representing 56.2% of total server revenue. Other accelerated servers also recorded strong growth, increasing 122.1% to $17.7 billion.
Non-x86 servers reached $58.7 billion, more than double their year-ago revenue with 107.6% growth, capturing 47.9% of the market. Meanwhile, x86 server revenue reached $63.9 billion, down 2.9% year over year as supply constraints affected shipments.
The United States remained the largest server market, generating $79.6 billion in revenue, followed by China with $19.2 billion. Other regions also recorded strong growth, including Canada at 190.9%, Middle East and Africa at 121.4%, and Western Europe at 80.6%.
Among vendors, Dell Technologies ranked first with $20.3 billion in revenue and a 16.5% market share, driven by higher demand for AI servers. Super Micro ranked second with $9.3 billion and 7.6% share, while Lenovo placed third with $5.6 billion and 4.6% share.
ODM Direct suppliers remained the largest segment with $61.5 billion in revenue, although their market share declined to 50.2% from 64.1% a year earlier as branded server vendors gained more AI infrastructure business.
IDC said demand for servers remains strong, with supply availability now becoming the main challenge. The research firm expects supply conditions to improve through 2027 as additional manufacturing capacity becomes available.