Global Server Market Hits Record $166.3 Billion Driven by AI Infrastructure
According to IDC's quarterly tracker, the global server market reached a record $166.3 billion revenue in Q2 2026, representing a 52.0% year-over-year increase. Server shipments grew by 15.4% during the quarter, indicating a significant rise of over 30% in average server selling prices. The market data highlights how massive corporate capital expenditure on AI hardware is driving revenues to historic highs even as unit shipment growth remains moderate. Furthermore, the rapid growth of non-x86 architectures signals a long-term structural shift in data center hardware toward Arm and custom accelerator designs. GPU-accelerated servers generated $87.4 billion (52.6% of the market) with average selling prices jumping 43.6% despite a 10.8% decline in GPU shipment volume, while other non-GPU accelerated servers surged 237.6% to $27.5 billion. Non-x86 server revenue expanded 146.0% year-over-year to $74.4 billion, now capturing 44.8% of global server revenue compared to x86's $91.9 billion.
## BACKGROUND
Accelerated computing relies on specialized processors such as GPUs or custom ASICs alongside traditional CPUs to accelerate demanding artificial intelligence and high-performance computing workloads. Historically, data centers have been dominated by x86 architecture chips from Intel and AMD, but non-x86 architectures like Arm and custom RISC designs are gaining traction due to energy efficiency and specialized performance.