• PwC forecasts global data-centre capex rising from about US$800bn in 2026 to US$1.8tn a year by 2050
  • ICT equipment is expected to rise from 70% to 93% of total capex as servers, GPUs and networking hardware are replaced repeatedly

The fact

PwC forecasts US$31.6 trillion in global data-centre capital expenditure between 2026 and 2050 under its central scenario, as AI adoption increases demand for computing capacity. Annual spending is projected to rise from roughly US$800 billion in 2026 to US$1.1 trillion in 2030 and US$1.8 trillion by 2050. The forecast includes both data-centre construction and the ICT equipment installed inside facilities.

PwC commissioned Oxford Economics to model capex across 46 countries and territories. The US$31.6 trillion central estimate sits within a range of about US$22 trillion to US$50 trillion, driven largely by different assumptions about AI adoption. PwC expects ICT equipment to increase from 70% of total capex in 2026 to 93% by 2050. Across the market, it estimates that every US$1 of construction capex effectively commits roughly US$12 to future ICT spending on servers, storage, networking equipment, GPUs and other hardware that must be installed, refreshed, and upgraded.

The assessment

PwC’s forecast makes the hardware replacement cycle, rather than the initial build, the main driver of long-term capex. Servers and GPUs typically turn over every four to six years, while the building shell, utility connections and fibre routes have much longer useful lives. A data centre operating for 20 years could therefore require several major ICT refreshes after it enters service.

For operators and investors, this means capital planning continues well after commissioning. Budgets may need to fund new compute and networking equipment several times while the same building, grid connection and other long-lived infrastructure remain in service. The scale of that recurring spending remains dependent on AI demand and whether operators can justify successive hardware upgrades.

For BTW readers, the US$31.6 trillion forecast is therefore not simply a measure of how much new data-centre construction PwC expects. It describes a capital model in which long-lived sites support several shorter equipment cycles, making post-commissioning hardware procurement a major part of a facility’s lifetime capital requirement.

What to watch

Watch whether data-centre spending shifts further towards ICT equipment and whether hardware refreshes follow the four-to-six-year cycle used in PwC’s forecast. Annual global capex moving towards US$1.1 trillion by 2030, alongside a rising ICT share, would provide an early test of its central scenario.