Server sales are booming despite rising prices, as AI infrastructure investment spreads beyond the big hyperscalers to enterprises and government buyers. According to market intelligence firm IDC, vendor revenue hit an all-time quarterly high of $166.3 billion in Q2, up 52 per cent year-on-year, in stark contrast to the PC market, where memory-driven price rises have discouraged buyers and dented unit shipments.

Server shipments still grew 15.4 per cent year-on-year despite average prices climbing, with GPU-accelerated systems up nearly 44 per cent to $170,200 and non-accelerated servers up over 33 per cent to almost $13,000, largely due to memory shortages and other supply constraints. GPU-accelerated servers accounted for nearly 53 per cent of total revenue, but IDC said demand is broadening to specialised cloud providers, sovereign AI programmes and enterprises adopting agentic workloads. Dell's market share rose sharply to 13.4 per cent as big brands eat into the traditional dominance of white-box manufacturers, while the US remained the largest market at $112.2 billion, ahead of China's $26.4 billion.