IDC raises 2029 forecast for OCP-recognized infrastructure spending to $800 billion

San Jose, CA – International Data Corporation (IDC) has substantially revised its global spending forecast for IT infrastructure recognized by the Open Compute Project (OCP) Foundation. The latest IDC market impact study now projects annual spending to reach approximately $800 billion by 2029, a 2.7-fold increase from the $295 billion estimated for the same year in the prior study.

The revised forecast anticipates spending to hit $892 billion in 2030. In that year, OCP-recognized IT equipment is expected to account for roughly 51% of the total spending across the infrastructure categories analyzed in the study. The annual study, commissioned by the OCP Foundation, evaluates the market impact of OCP-recognized gear. This year's findings reflect both the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure investments and a broader adoption of OCP designs.

IDC forecasts that spending on OCP-recognized IT equipment will grow from approximately $154 billion in 2025 to $892 billion by 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate of about 42%. Servers constitute the largest spending category, largely driven by GPU-accelerated systems. Continued growth is also projected for switching equipment, rack infrastructure, power, and cooling systems as organizations deploy necessary systems to support increasingly demanding workloads.

AI-related spending within OCP-recognized infrastructure is expected to reach approximately $628 billion in 2030, accounting for nearly 70% of the total projected figure. IDC also notes that a growing ecosystem of solution providers and the availability of openly shared designs are driving adoption. The OCP Foundation indicates that these open designs help organizations implement new technologies at scale.