Meta intends spending hundreds of billions of dollars on building AI datacentres in its quest for “superintelligence”. Its planned 5GW datacentre complex in Louisiana will cover an area close to the size of Manhattan.

In late July, Gartner updated its 2025 growth forecasts for global IT spending from those issued in January. The latest figures show a surge of 42% in expected spend on datacentres, up from the 23% increase it predicted earlier in the year. Every other segment showed lower growth: IT services went from an expected 9% growth for 2025 to 4%, while software spending forecasts declined from 14% to 10%.

Aurélian Duthoit, who monitors risk in the IT industry at trade credit insurance company Coface, said the slowdown reflects a pullback in non-AI corporate investment, which was due to geopolitical and economic turbulence. “Clients are either freezing discretionary IT spending or reallocating budgets toward AI-related solutions, reinforcing the divide between high-growth and stagnating activities within segments.”