"The price of oil has very little to do with it," John‑David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, told The Register.
Gartner's upgraded forecast: 13.5% growth to $6.31 trillion
Gartner raised its projection for worldwide IT spending to 13.5 percent growth in 2026, forecasting a total of $6.31 trillion. That is up from a February forecast of 10.8 percent growth and $6.15 trillion — an increase of nearly three percentage points in the span of a few weeks. The upgrade came a day after the International Energy Agency (IEA) warned that the US/Israel/Iran war was creating what it characterized as the worst energy crisis the world has faced.
Why Gartner says oil prices are not driving IT spend
John‑David Lovelock framed the disconnect plainly. While the conflict has pushed oil and gas prices higher, Gartner’s analysis finds little direct link between those energy shocks and the strong IT spending trajectory. "The closest direct effect we can get is in some countries, the price of electricity will come up," he said, pointing to localized impacts in parts of Asia‑Pacific. Beyond that, he said, "to say that a business or a technology provider is going to change their plans based on the price of electricity just isn't [true]." Lovelock added that the only other plausible channel — a broader fall in business confidence — has not materialized in the data Gartner is seeing.
Where the growth is concentrated: hyperscalers, datacenters and AI infrastructure
Gartner’s numbers make clear the growth is not evenly distributed across IT categories. Consumer IT is forecast to grow by only 4.1 percent and has been affected by higher memory costs. Enterprise IT spending growth is "in the range of 7 percent." The jump to 13.5 percent becomes visible only when spending by hyperscalers and large cloud providers — specifically on datacenters and AI‑optimized servers — is included. "We only get the 13.5 percent when we include that being spent by the hyperscalers. Without the datacenter spend, without the AI optimized servers, overall spend is growing 7.2 percent this year," Lovelock said. He emphasized that "all the extra spending is the tech providers, the hyperscalers, still building out these datacenters, still building new foundational technology together for us to use for AI and we're still building the AI models."
How hyperscalers, CIOs, and consumers are positioned
- Hyperscalers and tech providers: Gartner sees these organizations continuing to invest heavily. Lovelock argued they are on a "four‑year cycle" of investment and are "unlikely to see any pause" in their AI race even if economic confidence falters.
- CIOs and enterprise IT users: Gartner expects enterprise buyers to shoulder the consequences of hyperscaler investment "in the long run." CIOs are reported to be in a trough of expectations for AI projects in 2026; Lovelock said, "We're probably out of it by the beginning of 2027," and forecast a return toward more predictable, productive AI deployments only by about 2030.
- Consumers: Consumer IT growth is muted at 4.1 percent and has been dented by rising memory costs, making consumer hardware spending a noticeably smaller contributor to the overall uptick.
Risk factors: the war and the assumptions behind the forecast
Gartner’s upside depends explicitly on one key assumption: the war will be a "relatively short‑lived conflict." Lovelock cautioned that if hostilities persisted throughout the year and global confidence collapsed, some CIO budgets could stall. Even so, he suggested that the hyperscalers' multi‑year investment cadence would likely continue regardless: "even if that happens, we're unlikely to see any pause in the technology providers' race [for AI] because they're on a four‑year cycle here."
Gartner’s outlook therefore blends two adjacent realities visible in the data: an overall market growing at roughly 7.2 percent when excluding hyperscaler datacenter and AI infrastructure spending, and a much faster headline rate of 13.5 percent driven by concentrated, capital‑intensive buildouts for cloud and AI. That concentration is the story policymakers, procurement leaders, and enterprise buyers will find most consequential — the near‑term spending surge is real, but it is not evenly shared.
Original story: https://go.theregister.com/feed/www.theregister.com/2026/04/22/oil_crisis_what_oil_crisis/
