The server market’s in the middle of a pretty major upheaval—definitely not business as usual. With AI workloads basically eating up everything in sight, demand for processing power is through the roof. IDC’s numbers point to the total market value hitting $366 billion dby 2025, which is a massive 45% increase from just last year. In short: servers have never been more critical, and everyone’s scrambling to keep up.
The first quarter alone saw revenue reach an eye-watering $95.2 billion, a 134% leap year over year. Much of this explosive growth stems from a clear shift in computing needs—from traditional enterprise workloads to highly specialized AI-driven operations. GPU-accelerated servers are taking center stage, accounting for more than half of next year’s projected server spend.
x86-based systems still dominate the landscape, expected to pull in nearly $284 billion. But non-x86 servers, tailored for niche workloads, are quickly catching up, set to grow over 63% and contribute $82 billion. ARM-based systems are also gaining traction fast, now making up more than a fifth of all server shipments.
Driving much of this momentum is the move toward more reasoning-capable AI models. As projects like OpenAI’s Stargate begin to take shape, the infrastructure required to support large-scale inferencing and model training grows exponentially. IDC’s Kuba Stolarski pointed out that efficiency gains in model design haven’t reduced the raw compute needs—if anything, they’ve raised the bar.
The United States will dominate the global server market in 2025 and account for 62 percent of total revenue. China holds a strong second position at 21 percent, while Japan and the broader Asia-Pacific region continue to post steady, if slower, gains. Meanwhile, Europe, Latin America, and Canada are seeing more tempered growth. Analysts expect Canada to dip slightly, mainly because companies bought an unusually high volume of servers last year, which raised the baseline.
But there’s more to this than regional numbers. Hyperscale operators are beginning to rethink where and how they spend. While GPUs remain a major investment, more players are now funneling money into FPGAs and ASICs—custom chips that deliver targeted computing power while consuming less energy.
Server infrastructure? Forget slow, steady growth. We’re talking about a total overhaul. AI no longer sits in R&D or proof-of-concept labs. Businesses now use it in their daily operations to drive real-time decisions. And, finally, the hardware is starting to catch up to the demands. Progress. Painful, but necessary.
