TrendForce Projects 90% Capex Surge for Top Nine Cloud Providers
Market research firm TrendForce projects that the top nine global cloud service providers will increase their capital expenditure by 90% this year to over $886.7 billion. Additionally, the firm raised its forecast for AI server shipment growth in 2026 from 28% to 31%. This massive surge in spending highlights the intense, ongoing race to build out AI infrastructure globally. The investments will directly benefit hardware suppliers like NVIDIA, while also accelerating the deployment of custom AI chips (ASICs) by major tech giants. The top nine providers include US giants like Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle, alongside Chinese firms Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, and Tencent. The growth is driven by rising demand for NVIDIA rack solutions, the ramp-up of custom AI ASICs from Google and AWS, and Chinese firms adopting localized hardware.
## BACKGROUND
Cloud service providers (CSPs) are categorized into hyperscalers (like AWS and Microsoft Azure) and Tier-2 providers, which are smaller public cloud companies that often focus on specialized GPU hosting. To run complex AI models efficiently, these providers increasingly rely on AI ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits), which are chips custom-designed for AI workloads rather than general-purpose computing.