Worldwide end-user spending on AI models and platforms is projected to total $64 billion in 2026, up 63.4% from $39 billion in 2025, according to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company. Spending on GenAI models is forecast to grow 117%, while AI platform spending will rise 36.9% in 2026.

AI is rapidly gaining influence over purchase decisions as consumers rethink which sources they should trust. More than half of consumers say they don't fully trust any single source of information, according to new research from Boston Consulting Group. But AI is already among consumers’ most trusted sources, along with experts and peers, and they expect their trust in it to increase by 15 percentage points by 2030, faster than any other source.

As artificial intelligence transitions from "technological exploration" to "large-scale deployment," basic data services are no longer simply a labor-intensive industry, but rather a core infrastructure determining the upper limit of model performance. However, the market still faces many gaps in understanding regarding the value measurement standards, technological evolution paths, and business models of data services. To clarify the true level of the industry and guide enterprises in formulating sustainable data strategies, International Data Corporation (IDC) has, for the first time, conducted a systematic quantitative study of AI basic data services as an independent sector, and recently officially released the "China Artificial Intelligence Basic Data Services Market Research Report, 2025" . The report shows that the market size of China's AI basic data services reached RMB 6.262 billion in 2025 , a year-on-year increase of 27.8%, exceeding market expectations. The market size is projected to further grow to RMB 7.834 billion in 2026, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.6% from 2025 to 2030.

The 2026 ISG Provider Lens Private/Hybrid Cloud — Data Center Services report for Germany finds that data center strategies are changing as AI becomes embedded in infrastructure environments. Computing requ

Low-earth orbit (LEO) direct-to-device (D2D) services in Australia and New Zealand are expected to deliver more than 670,000 connections in 2026, helping close the mobile connectivity gap in rural and regional communities, according to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company. This compares with more than 250,000 connections in 2025 and is forecast to exceed 1.5 million connections in 2027.

Brazilian organizations are redesigning hybrid cloud architectures to balance AI scalability, operational resilience and regulatory requirements, according to a new research report published today by Information Services Group (ISG), a global AI-centered technology research and advisory firm.

Enterprise technology leaders are facing mounting pressure to translate artificial intelligence investments into measurable financial and competitive gains as boards move beyond enthusiasm for experimentation and begin demanding evidence that transformation spending is improving performance. The shift is altering how CIOs select projects, organize technology teams and communicate with boards and executive peers.

Worldwide IT spending is expected to reach $6.37 trillion in 2026, up 14.2% from 2025, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company.

According to Gordon Cowan, founder and CEO of CyBrilliance, cyber resilience is best seen as a continuum encompassing preparedness, visibility, response, recovery and governance. Each component depends on the others. A gap in data visibility can complicate incident response. Compromised credentials can undermine otherwise effective security controls. Inaccessible or corrupted backups can delay recovery. Missing evidence can create regulatory, governance and insurance problems after the technical incident has been resolved.

The 2026 ISG Provider Lens Network — Software-Defined Solutions and Services report for Australia and New Zealand finds that enterprises are reshaping networks to support hybrid work, cloud-first application strategies, AI-enabled business processes and distributed operations while addressing heightened cyber risk and regulatory scrutiny. Organizations are replacing traditional MPLS-centric connectivity with managed SD-WAN, secure access service edge (SASE) and network-as-a-service (NaaS) models that combine automation, service assurance and integrated security.

At least 15% of nations in volatile geopolitical regions will establish formal data embassy agreements by 2029 to ensure continuity of government services and operations, according to Gartner, Inc., a business and technology insights company. This reflects a notable shift from today’s baseline, where only a few nations have adopted formal data embassies. A data embassy is a legally protected enclave that enables a nation to host critical digital infrastructure on foreign soil while retaining full sovereignty and control over its data.

The proliferation of generative AI tools, embedded AI capabilities and independently developed agents is creating a new management challenge for enterprise technology leaders. Experiments that begin as relatively isolated investments can become persistent departmental capabilities, while consumption-based pricing, access to enterprise data and autonomous actions create financial and operational dependencies that may be difficult to see from the center of the organization.

Based on insights from a BizTechReports executive interview with Tiago Azevedo, CIO of OutSystems, this implementation guide provides a framework for moving from distributed AI experimentation toward a more deliberate enterprise operating model.

The 2026 ISG Provider Lens® Private/Hybrid Cloud — Data Center Services report for Switzerland finds that enterprises are rethinking cloud strategies to meet evolving business, regulatory and AI requirements. As organizations scale AI deployments, they seek providers that can modernize core platforms while ensuring secure, compliant operations.

BizTechReports spoke with Gordon Cowan, founder and CEO of CyBrilliance, about how enterprise leaders should reassess cyber resilience as AI adoption accelerates. Drawing on his cybersecurity work and 45 years in the insurance industry, Cowan discussed the strategic, operational, financial and technological implications of preparing enterprises for a threat environment increasingly shaped by automation, compromised identities and rapidly evolving attack methods.

Nearly nine in ten CEOs say their companies are now seeing cost or revenue benefits from AI in targeted areas. Yet despite these early gains, most organizations are struggling to scale AI’s financial impact. The core problem is not technology. It is execution.

In the Company to Beat insights from Gartner, analysts have identified market-defining AI leaders across more than 40 categories to pinpoint the companies to beat. These companies are setting today’s benchmark for excellence.

In the fast moving and evolving AI vendor race, the Company to Beat is determined by a methodology based on, but not limited to, six key criteria that differentiate top vendors in the space: technical capabilities, customer implementations, potential customer base, business model, key partnerships, and the broader surrounding ecosystem.

The adoption of generative and agentic AI is creating a familiar enterprise technology problem as organizations experiment with models, build agents and adopt AI-enabled applications faster than traditional technology management processes can evaluate their costs, dependencies, security requirements and potential overlap with other initiatives.

For CIOs, the challenge is increasingly shifting toward creating an environment where AI experimentation can continue without allowing fragmented technologies and unpredictable consumption costs to overwhelm enterprise architectures and budgets. In this BizTechReports executive Q&A, Tiago Azevedo, CIO of OutSystems, discusses why AI sprawl is emerging, how the economics of AI are changing the conversation with CFOs, why traditional approaches to technology governance are insufficient and how enterprise architecture can provide a foundation for scaling agentic systems.

In 2026, China's AI Agent market is undergoing a crucial leap from proof-of-concept to large-scale deployment. IDC data shows that the number of active enterprise AI agents will jump from nearly 2 million in 2025 to an estimated 5 million in 2026 , demonstrating strong growth momentum. At the same time, IDC research indicates that enterprises are no longer satisfied with building isolated AI applications, but are instead shifting towards building unified enterprise-grade AI platforms.

Artificial intelligence is expanding the scope of enterprise cyber resilience as organizations increasingly rely on automated systems to access information, make recommendations and influence business decisions. This shift is putting greater pressure on technology leaders to understand where critical data resides, how it moves through the enterprise, and whether systems can be restored to a trusted operational state following an attack.

Omdia has raised its 2026 semiconductor revenue forecast to 94.1% year-over-year (YoY), driven by exceptional growth in DRAM and NAND as AI demand continues to outpace global supply. Memory ICs are now expected to account for more than 50% of total semiconductor revenue in 2026. AI demand has exceeded the industry’s current ability to produce and package chips, with bottlenecks across high bandwidth memory (HBM), advanced packaging, and node capacity expected to persist until at least 2027.