Shipments of AI servers expected to grow: TrendForce

• By Meryl Kao / Staff Reporter

• • Add TT as Preferred Source

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With strong investment by cloud service providers (CSPs), coupled with purchases from tier-two data center operators such as Tesla Inc and CoreWeave Inc, global artificial intelligence (AI) server shipments are expected to grow 32.2 percent this year to about 2.82 million units, TrendForce Corp (集邦科技) said.

Shipments are expected to remain strong next year, thanks to spending from major CSPs, neocloud providers, sovereign AI projects and new AI models and applications launched by developers of large language models, the Taipei-based market researcher said in a report on Wednesday last week.

In August, TrendForce forecast shipments of about 2.9 million units for next year.

A person walks past AI servers during Computex in Taipei on June 2.

Photo: EPA

With high average selling prices and stable shipments, AI servers are expected to generate about US$479 billion in market value this year, accounting for almost 75 percent of the overall server market’s US$639.2 billion, it said.

Next year, AI servers’ market value is forecast to rise to US$920 billion and account for 81 percent of the overall server market, TrendForce said, adding that the overall server market value is predicted to exceed US$1 trillion for the first time next year.

Separately, TrendForce said the combined capital expenditure by the world’s nine largest CSPs is forecast to exceed US$957 billion this year, up 106 percent year-on-year.

Their combined spending next year is expected to surpass US$1.5 trillion, up 60 percent year-on-year, it said.

That was 10 percentage points higher than TrendForce’s previous forecast of a 50 percent growth for next year, it said, citing higher server system prices and rising component costs caused by supply shortages.

The revision accounts for advance payments required by some component suppliers to secure supply, TrendForce said.

The nine CSPs are Alphabet Inc’s Google, Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc, Microsoft Corp, Oracle Corp, ByteDance Ltd (字節跳動), Tencent Holdings Ltd (騰訊), Alibaba Group Holding Ltd (阿里巴巴) and Baidu Inc (百度), it said.