IDC lifts 2029 OCP hardware spending forecast to $800 billion

IDC raised its forecast for annual spending on OCP-recognised IT equipment in 2029 to approximately $800 billion from $295 billion in last year’s estimate, the Open Compute Project Foundation said on 13 October. The approximately 2.7-fold revision comes from an IDC market impact study commissioned by the foundation.

IDC projects $892 billion by 2030

The foundation said IDC projects spending on OCP-recognised equipment to rise from approximately $154 billion in 2025 to $892 billion in 2030, an approximate compound annual growth rate of 42%. The figures measure annual spending, rather than cumulative investment over the period. The foundation commissions the market impact study each year.

Servers account for approximately $814 billion of the projected 2030 total, according to the foundation’s account of the study. Most of the forecast growth in server spending is driven by GPU-accelerated systems. The foundation also put AI-related spending across the covered infrastructure at approximately $628 billion in 2030, or approximately 70% of the total.

The forecast includes external storage, switches, IT racks, power, cooling, carriage equipment and peripherals alongside servers. IDC projects that OCP-recognised equipment will account for approximately 51% of spending in the infrastructure categories covered by the study by 2030, the foundation said. That percentage applies to those categories, rather than to all IT spending.

OCP designs extend beyond foundation members

The foundation said the study counts use of OCP-recognised equipment beyond its formal membership, including organisations worldwide that obtain and implement openly shared designs. IDC identified a growing group of suppliers and the availability of those designs as factors supporting adoption, according to the foundation.

Cliff Grossner, the foundation’s director of innovation, said open designs were taking a greater role in meeting demand for AI infrastructure. He described work across chips, servers, cooling, power and the connection between data centres and the electricity grid. The foundation also said its community had advanced higher-power rack designs, liquid cooling, Ethernet-based AI networks and open chip specifications over the past year.

The foundation’s Open Data Center for AI initiative brings together work on power, cooling and facilities management. Its OCP Energy project covers energy generation and storage, while AI Computing Continuum addresses deployment in enterprise, regional and edge environments as well as hyperscale data centres. An earlier AI Affairs report covered Nvidia’s contribution of Vera Rubin designs to OCP and its plans for USFP optics with Cisco.

Dell offers integration around OCP racks

For equipment suppliers, the spending projection is distinct from a customer order. TECHi reported that Dell’s PowerRack offering supports conventional 19-inch racks and OCP-standard 21-inch configurations. Dell pairs its servers, networking and cooling equipment with premises reviews, technical design work, system testing and one point of customer assistance.

TECHi reported that Dell was also among the companies supporting AMD’s Helion rack blueprint, which AMD described in an announcement on 12 October. AMD plans to contribute the specification to OCP and is targeting partner configurations for November 2026. The publication named Cisco, HPE, Lenovo, Supermicro, Hon Hai, QCT and Wiwynn among the other supporting companies.

Dell’s Infrastructure Solutions Group recorded $31.782 billion in revenue and $4.781 billion in operating income for the quarter ended 31 July, TECHi reported. Its reported operating margin was 15.0%, against 8.8% a year earlier. AI-optimised servers contributed $16.401 billion of the group’s sales.