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Nov 2

Gartner’s $4.05T AI forecast and Forrester’s Predictions 2027 put the AI spending slowdown in 2028

Bar chart of Gartner's worldwide AI spending forecast rising from $1.80 trillion in 2025 to $7.01 trillion in 2030, with 2027 adding $1,304 billion, the most of any year, and growth slowing to 28% in 2028 and 15% in 2030
Gartner’s worldwide AI spending forecast, 2025 to 2030. The year 2027 adds $1.30 trillion, more than any other year, before growth falls to 28% in 2028. Click any graphic to open it full size. Source: Gartner (G00862061, Oct. 7, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.

Gartner and Forrester both forecast AI spending rising in 2027. Gartner’s October 7 AI spending forecast puts worldwide AI spending at $4.05 trillion next year, up 47% from $2.75 trillion in 2026, while Forrester’s Predictions 2027, published October 21, says one dollar in five of business technology spending will go to AI.

Each firm places the slowdown somewhere specific. In Gartner’s model, 2027 adds $1.30 trillion in new AI spending, the most of any year through 2030, and growth then drops to 28% in 2028 and 15% by 2030. Forrester’s pressure lands on budgets instead. Only 53% of tech leaders expect their budgets to beat inflation, so leaders plan their deepest cuts in services.

I built this comparison from Gartner’s 3Q26 AI spending forecast (G00862061) and the workbook Gartner publishes with it, Gartner’s October 21 IT spending forecast and Forrester’s public Predictions 2027 materials. The subtractions, shares and dollars added are my calculations.

Four numbers that frame Gartner and Forrester AI spending in 2027

  • Gartner added $413 billion to its 2027 AI forecast in one quarter. AI infrastructure rose $420 billion from the July forecast, more than the total increase, because Gartner trimmed AI software by $8 billion.
  • 2027 is the peak year for new AI dollars in Gartner’s model. Spending adds $1.30 trillion in 2027, then $1.14 trillion in 2028, $920 billion in 2029 and $897 billion in 2030.
  • The two headline numbers measure different things. Gartner sizes the whole AI value chain, chips and consumer devices included. In contrast, Forrester sizes AI’s share of business technology spending.
  • Both firms see services absorbing the squeeze. Gartner forecasts IT services growing 4.9% in 2027 while data center systems grow 55.5%. Meanwhile, Forrester says leaders already plan their deepest cuts in services.

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Oct 29

AI revenue gap forecasts compared across Gartner, Goldman, Bain and JPMorgan

AI revenue gap comparison with Gartner’s cumulative shortfall above $6 trillion through 2032, Goldman’s $417 billion annual revenue requirement, Bain’s $6 trillion annual market in 2031 and JPMorgan’s older $650 billion annual estimate. Different scopes, not a ranking.
Four financial tests with different periods and revenue recipients. Gartner, Prepare for AI Market Consolidation: Capital Write-Downs Could Exceed $4 Trillion by 2032 (G00861169), September 14, 2026, alongside Goldman’s September 24 report, Bain’s Technology Report 2026 and J.P. Morgan’s January 2026 discussion. Shortfalls calculated from source inputs. Analysis and graphic by Software Strategies Blog. Click to open full size.

The AI revenue gap exceeds $6 trillion through 2032 in Gartner’s September consolidation model. Infrastructure owners need more than $14 trillion in cumulative revenue to cover capital, financing and a 12% return. Gartner forecasts no more than $8 trillion attributable to those assets. The difference is my calculation.

That shortfall is not a write-down forecast. Gartner separately estimates more than $4 trillion in asset value exposed to write-downs under that return assumption.

Meanwhile, Goldman’s $417 billion annual requirement and Bain’s $6 trillion annual 2031 market use different financial tests. My infrastructure comparison followed spending into the buildout. This analysis follows the returns.

  • Who earns the revenue matters. Application sales support infrastructure returns only insofar as they contribute to the owner’s economics.
  • The accounting clock changes the hurdle. Equipment lives, replacement cycles and financing affect how much revenue is needed, and when.
  • Higher demand can widen the funding gap. More sales may require more capacity, so spending growth alone does not establish returns.

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Oct 26

20 Cybersecurity Startups to Watch in 2027

Bar chart ranking the latest verified funding round of each of the 20 cybersecurity startups to watch in 2027, from Island and Cyera at $400 million to Opal Security at $23 million, colored by the six sections of the article
Eighteen of the 20 closed their latest round in 2026. Bars show announced rounds, not total funding or valuation. Click the chart to open it full size.

Cyera paid $1 billion for Oasis Security and closed the deal on Sept. 3, 2026, 37 days after Globes reported the agreement on July 28. In late June, Oasis had made CRN’s list of the 10 hottest cybersecurity startups of 2026 so far. Startup lists go stale fast. Notable Capital’s Rising in Cyber 2026 names 30 companies picked by 150 CISOs and security executives, with funding data as of Q1 2026. A CISO setting a 2027 budget needs something narrower from both lists. Which young vendors produced evidence this year that they will still be independent, shipping and staffed when the contract renews?

Dot chart of each company's latest 2026 funding round by announcement date, showing 14 of the 20 rounds landing after March 31 and 12 after CRN's June 26 list, with markers for Notable Capital's Q1 data, the CRN list and Cyera completing its Oasis acquisition on Sept. 3
Each dot is a company’s latest verified round, placed on its announcement date. Keycard and 7AI raised in late 2025 and are not shown.

That question picked these 20. Every company here produced at least one verified 2026 event beyond a valuation, whether a priced round, a named production customer, a shipped product or a public technical result. Valuation earned no one a spot. Eleven of the 20 appear on neither the CRN nor the Notable list.

Eighteen of the 20 closed their latest round in 2026. That money turns into hires, product launches and sales coverage next year, when buyers will feel it. Several companies here have already tied specific 2027 deliverables to the cash.

The research cutoff is Oct. 17, 2026. To qualify, a company had to be privately held and independent on that date. Late-stage companies qualify under the same rule as seed-stage ones, so Cyera and Island stay in. A completed acquisition disqualifies a company. So does an announced sale, which is why Oasis is out.

Securing AI agents company profiles for Onyx Security, HiddenLayer, Reco and Harmonic Security, showing each company's latest verified round, total funding where disclosed, buyer, 2027 watch item and what to validate
Securing AI agents at a glance. Bars share one scale across all six sections.

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Oct 22

AI infrastructure spending forecasts compared: every major firm raised its 2030 number in 2026

AI infrastructure spending forecasts compared, 2026 revisions: Dell'Oro raised 2030 data center capex from $1.7T to more than $3T, Gartner raised 2030 data center systems 58% to $2.16T, hyperscaler capex consensus rose 52% to $800B, IDC raised 2029 AI infrastructure 42% to $1.08T; Citi's $3.8T 2030 AI capex is 3.1x IDC's $1.21T
Four firms raised the same AI infrastructure forecast between editions, with 2030 figures from Dell’Oro, Gartner and IDC. Click any chart to open it full size. Sources linked below, analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.

Every major AI infrastructure spending forecast went up in 2026, and the biggest increases landed on 2029 and 2030. Dell’Oro Group nearly doubled its 2030 data center capex outlook in six months. Gartner raised its 2030 data center systems forecast 58% in a single quarter. IDC raised its 2029 AI infrastructure forecast 42% in nine months.

The firms still disagree on how big the build-out gets. For 2030, the published annual figures run from IDC’s $1.21 trillion to Citi’s $3.8 trillion, a 3.1x gap. Most of that gap comes from what each firm counts, not from different views of demand.

This post puts the public numbers from 12 firms side by side. They are Gartner, IDC, Dell’Oro, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, Bain, Forrester, JLL, the IEA and BloombergNEF. It shows what each one measures, how far each has moved, what the five largest buyers are actually spending, what the power grid can deliver and what the build-out has to earn back. Where a firm published only a range or a scenario, I say so.
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Oct 19

Gartner’s $9.76T IT spending forecast: servers will outspend all IT services by 2030

Gartner IT spending forecast 2024 to 2030 rising from $5.04 trillion to $9.76 trillion, stacked by data center systems, software, IaaS, IT services, communications services and devices, with six KPI tiles
Gartner’s 3Q26 worldwide IT spending forecast by segment, 2024-2030, with six tiles on the numbers that matter most. Click any chart to open it full size. Source: Gartner (G00862058, Sept. 25, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.

Gartner’s latest IT spending forecast puts worldwide IT spending at $6.39 trillion in 2026 and $9.76 trillion by 2030. Spending grows 13.2% in 2026 in constant currency, or 14.5% in current dollars, and compounds at 11.2% a year from 2025 to 2030.

One subsegment drives that growth more than any other. Server spending grows from $386.5 billion in 2025 to $1.97 trillion in 2030. That $1.58 trillion gain is 38% of the $4.18 trillion the IT market adds over the period. By 2030, the world spends more on servers than on all IT services combined.

Gartner calls building AI compute capacity “the largest infrastructure build-out in history.” This edition makes the build-out bigger. Gartner raised its 2030 total by $816.8 billion from last quarter, and data center systems account for $794.9 billion of that increase.

I built this analysis from Gartner Market Databook, 3Q26 (G00862058), published September 25, 2026. Segment totals, growth rates and revisions come from the report. Subsegment and regional figures come from the 7,896-row dataset Gartner publishes with it, which covers 19 subsegments, nine regions and 47 countries. The shares, dollars added and comparisons are my calculations.
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Oct 15

Gartner’s $953B IoT forecast puts 81% of spending in endpoints and the fastest growth in software

Gartner IoT market opportunity forecast 2024 to 2030 rising from $620.9 billion to $953.3 billion, stacked by endpoint electronics, communication services, services, infrastructure software, application software and security, with six KPI tiles for 2026 and 2030 totals, new spending, application software growth, 5G growth and the 2028 revision
IoT market opportunity reaches $953.3B by 2030, with endpoint electronics carrying 81% of it. Click any chart to open it full size. Source: Gartner (G00858825, Sept. 25, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.

The new Gartner IoT forecast puts four out of every five dollars in devices, and the fastest growth in the software that runs them.

Published September 25, the forecast sizes the worldwide IoT market opportunity at $736.6 billion in 2026, up 9.6%, and $953.3 billion by 2030. That is a 7.2% compound annual growth rate from 2025 through 2030, landing just under $1 trillion.

Endpoint electronics account for $769.2 billion of the 2030 total, or 80.7%. Application software grows at 20.4% a year and infrastructure software at 14.8%. Together, the two software segments compound at 16.3%, 2.3 times the market.

The trillion-dollar mark also moved. Gartner’s previous edition, published in June 2024, put the 2028 market at $990.5 billion. The new edition puts 2028 at $850.3 billion, a $140.2 billion reduction, and does not cross $1 trillion before 2030.

I built this analysis from Gartner’s forecast report (G00858825) and the full detailed dataset behind it: 73,493 rows covering 6 technology segments, 28 subsegments, 12 sectors, 47 use cases, 9 regions and 7 years.

Each bar in the hero chart stacks Gartner’s six technology segments in current U.S. dollars. Navy is endpoint electronics, mid-blue is communication services, sky blue is services, teal is infrastructure software, purple is application software and red is security. Italic figures above each bar give year-over-year growth.

Six tiles underneath carry the 2026 and 2030 totals, the $281.0 billion in new spending between 2025 and 2030, the application software growth rate, the 5G growth rate and the 2028 revision against the 2024 edition.
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Oct 12

Gartner says frontier AI makes patch speed a vanity metric. Tolerable exposure time replaces it.

Gartner frontier AI vulnerability management hero chart showing 2026 and 2030 spending on managed security operations, vulnerability assessment, threat intelligence and network detection and response, with six tiles summarizing Gartner's findings on exploit timing, patch metrics, testing bottlenecks, actions, regulator deadlines and the 2026 trends
Gartner says frontier AI turns patch speed into a vanity metric. Spending bars show the exposure-focused categories in Gartner’s 3Q26 security forecast. Click any chart to open it full size. Sources: Gartner (G00859901, Aug. 6, 2026; G00862059, Sept. 24, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.

Gartner’s new research on frontier AI vulnerability management says the patch-speed metric most security teams report to their boards no longer measures anything useful.

Gartner analysts Rob McMillan and Alex Michaels put it bluntly in a research note published August 6: “Measuring ‘how fast we patch’ is a vanity metric; the only metric that matters now is ‘tolerable exposure time.'”

The note covers one of Gartner’s nine top cybersecurity trends for 2026: frontier AI models transforming vulnerability management. Its central argument runs against most vendor messaging. The real shock from frontier AI is not faster attackers. It is the volume of vulnerabilities that vendors and open-source projects will now find in their own code, and the flood of urgent updates that follows.

Gartner calls it a supply side shock, one that “permanently breaks traditional volume-based patching processes.”

I built this analysis from Gartner’s research note (G00859901) and paired it with category data from Gartner’s 3Q26 information security forecast (G00862059), which sizes the markets security teams will buy from as they shift to exposure management.

The bars in the hero chart show 2026 and 2030 end-user spending for four exposure-focused categories. Six tiles underneath summarize the note’s core findings.
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Oct 8

Gartner’s $812.6B app software forecast sends 38% of new spending to CRM as agentic AI targets $116B of legacy apps

Gartner enterprise application software forecast 2024 to 2030 rising from $384.8 billion to $812.6 billion, stacked by CRM, ERP, other application software, email and authoring, analytic platforms, supply chain management, content services and project and portfolio management, with six KPI tiles
Gartner’s 3Q26 enterprise application software forecast by market, 2024-2030, with six tiles on the numbers that matter most. Click any chart to open it full size. Source: Gartner (G00862072, Sept. 22, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.

Enterprise application software spending reaches $496.3 billion in 2026 and $812.6 billion by 2030, according to the latest Gartner application software forecast. That is a 12.8% compound annual growth rate in constant currency, revised up from 12.7% last quarter.

The headline growth rate hides a sharper story. CRM alone captures $119.2 billion, or 38%, of the $316.2 billion the market adds between 2026 and 2030. In the same report, Gartner says cross-functional agentic AI will cannibalize $116 billion from traditional application software spending by 2030.

Those two numbers are close in size, and they point to the same conclusion. Most of the new money in application software goes to the markets where agentic AI is proving value first. Legacy suites that do not embed agents compete for a shrinking slice.

I built this analysis from Gartner’s Forecast: Enterprise Application Software, Worldwide, 2024-2030, 3Q26 (G00862072), published September 22, 2026. All market, subsegment and regional figures come from the 7,567-row dataset Gartner publishes with the report. The shares, dollars added and comparisons are my calculations.
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Oct 5

Gartner’s $247.5B security forecast makes post-quantum firewall refreshes the only upgrade through 2030

Gartner information security forecast 2024 to 2030 showing spending rising from $192.9 billion to $372.8 billion by software, services, network and consumer security, with six KPI tiles below the chart for 2026 and 2030 totals, new spending, the firewall revision, 2027 firewall growth and securing AI
Security spending climbs to $372.8B by 2030, and post-quantum firewall refreshes drew the only upgrade. Click any chart to open it full size. Source: Gartner (G00862059, Sept. 24, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.

The 3Q26 Gartner information security forecast raised exactly one growth rate.

Gartner now projects firewall equipment spending to grow 13.4% in 2027 in constant currency, up from the 7.8% in its June forecast. Network security equipment overall rises to 12.8% from 8.7%. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is the cause. Many installed firewalls can’t run the new algorithms, which forces early replacement.

Every other business category in the 41-category forecast kept the constant-currency outlook it had 91 days earlier.

Published September 24, the forecast puts worldwide end-user spending at $247.5 billion in 2026, up 13.6% in current U.S. dollars and 12.7% in constant currency.

Spending reaches $372.8 billion by 2030. Gartner frames that as $373 billion and a 10.8% compound annual growth rate in constant currency from 2025 through 2030.

I built this analysis from Gartner’s 3Q26 report (G00862059), the full detailed dataset of 13,489 rows covering 47 countries, 9 regions, 41 categories and 7 years, and a line-by-line comparison against the 2Q26 file Gartner released in June (G00855892).

For the 2Q26 update that first counted securing AI inside the forecast, see Gartner’s $248.2B security forecast makes securing AI the only segment accelerating through 2030.

Each bar in the hero chart stacks four parts of Gartner’s forecast in current U.S. dollars. Navy is business security software, mid-blue is security services, sky blue is network security and light blue is consumer security software. Bold figures above the bars give each year’s total, with Gartner’s constant-currency growth rate in italics.

Six tiles underneath carry the 2026 and 2030 totals, the $125.4 billion in new spending between 2026 and 2030, the 2030 firewall revision in constant currency, the change in Gartner’s 2027 firewall growth forecast and the securing AI trajectory.

Both the 56% software share and the $80.5 billion software tile include consumer security software.
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Sep 21

Gartner’s $239B AI forecast: Agentic workflows take half of GenAI model revenue

Detailed 2024–2030 GenAI revenue chart with annual spending, agentic shares and dollar allocations; intermediate agentic shares are explicitly labeled SSB scenarios.
Gartner publishes the agentic share of GenAI model revenue for 2025 (5%) and 2030 (50%). The 2024 and 2026 to 2029 bars are my estimates and are labeled SSB. By 2030, agentic revenue reaches about $69.6 billion of $139.2 billion. Source: Gartner, G00855897 and G00861842. Chart and analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.

Agentic workflows will drive 50% of generative AI model revenue by 2030, up from 5% in 2025. Gartner published that projection on September 17, 2026, in its forecast analysis of the generative AI models market (G00861842). The number changes how every enterprise buyer should read the firm’s $239 billion AI platforms and models forecast.

Multistep reasoning, tool integration, and repeated validation steps multiply the inference events behind every completed business process. Gartner puts the impact at $38 billion in additional spending by 2030 from scaling agentic workflows alone.

Falling inference prices won’t offset it. Cheaper units unlock deeper automation, and deeper automation drives up token volume per task faster than prices fall. Gartner calls this a structural tailwind for GenAI model spending.

That consumption flywheel sits inside a market growing from $39 billion in 2025 to $239 billion by 2030 at a 42.8% compound rate, per Gartner’s June 25 forecast (G00855897). I built this analysis from both Gartner reports and Gartner’s country-level dataset, which covers 1,316 rows across 9 regions and 7 years. For the agentic spending crossover that sets up this post, see Gartner’s $5.95 trillion AI forecast puts the chatbot era on a 2027 deadline (August 5, 2026).

Model revenue is also one of the streams that has to pay for the infrastructure build-out. How far it falls short is the subject of my AI revenue gap comparison across Gartner, Goldman, Bain and JPMorgan.
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