IDC Raises 2029 Forecast for OCP-Recognized Infrastructure Spending to $800 Billion
IDC has significantly increased its forecast for global spending on Open Compute Project (OCP) recognized IT infrastructure. The projection now anticipates approximately $800 billion in spending by 2029, a 2.7-fold increase from previous estimates.
The Open Compute Project (OCP) Foundation announced that IDC has substantially revised its global spending forecast for OCP-recognized IT infrastructure. According to IDC's 2026 market impact study, annual spending on OCP-recognized hardware is now projected to reach approximately $800 billion by 2029. This represents a 2.7-fold increase compared to the $295 billion forecast for the same year in the previous study.
The updated projection anticipates spending to reach $892 billion in 2030, with OCP-recognized infrastructure accounting for about 51% of the total expenditures within the covered categories. IDC attributes this surge to the rapid expansion of AI-related investments and the broader adoption of OCP architectures.
"AI is changing the infrastructure needs of the industry, and these findings demonstrate the growing role of open designs in meeting that demand," said Cliff Grossner, Ph.D., Director of Innovation at OCP Foundation. "Our community brings companies together to address challenges spanning the entire data center, from chips and servers to cooling, power, and networking."
IDC forecasts that spending on OCP-recognized IT equipment will grow from roughly $154 billion in 2025 to $892 billion by 2030, reflecting a compound annual growth rate of approximately 42%. Servers represent the largest spending category, with GPU-accelerated systems driving a significant portion of this growth. Continued expansion is also expected in switching infrastructure, power, and cooling as organizations build systems to support increasingly demanding workloads.