Narayan AmmachchiTech spending is on the rise, and AI infrastructure is absorbing a large share of the investment. But behind the headline numbers, IT outsourcing firms are emerging as key beneficiaries, as enterprises struggle to handle AI complexity with limited internal talent.
Most technology research firms estimate that global tech spending rose by 14–15% in 2025. They expect this momentum to continue into 2026, with growth of at least 10%, even as geopolitical uncertainty persists.
“While the economic outlook is uncertain, the trend in IT budgets is still upwards. This is a reflection of the importance that the business places on IT as a resiliency factor,” said Leonardo Mendoza, Senior Core Manager and former CIO at Jalasoft, a nearshore software development company.
Enterprises rolling out AI are increasingly turning to IT services providers for implementation, as most do not have the required talent in-house.
Accenture’s AI bookings, for example, hit $2.2 billion in the latest quarter, almost double what they were a year ago. The number has grown so fast that Accenture has decided to stop reporting AI bookings as a separate metric. That means AI deals are now woven into the company’s core business.
When Accenture first began tracking AI bookings in 2023 — a year after ChatGPT’s launch — the numbers were modest. AI-related bookings were around $100 million, CEO Julie Sweet said in a call with analysts. Since then, growth has been explosive.
“The demand for AI is both real and rapidly maturing. We’ve now reached a point where advanced AI is being embedded in some way across nearly everything we do.”
“So far, we have delivered $11.5 billion in AI bookings across 11,000 projects,” Sweet said.
Many clients, she said, are moving beyond pilots and are now preparing to deploy AI at scale across their operations.
This marks a shift in where AI money flows. Much of the early AI spending went to infrastructure players, such as data centres and chipmakers. Going forward, a larger share of that spending is likely to move to IT services firms that integrate AI into business systems and manage it over time.
“Advanced AI is not a quick fix,” Sweet said. That is why companies are turning to service providers.
India’s Infosys is seeing the same trend. The company raised its FY26 revenue growth guidance to 3–3.5% after winning record AI-led deals in the last three months of 2025.
Research firms also point out that building AI capabilities in-house can cost two to three times more and take six to twelve months longer. By contrast, outsourcing to low-cost delivery hubs can reduce expenses by 30–50% while speeding up deployment.
Shift in IT Spending in Services Sector
While the AI infrastructure boom may be weakening the traditional outsourcing model, it is also generating much larger, higher-margin contracts.
A reading of tech spending reports shows IT services providers pivoting to newer tasks. These include training large language models, helping clients integrate AI tools with older IT systems, and ensuring compliance with regulatory requirements.
“Enterprises outsource to navigate AI ethics, data privacy,” IDC noted. As a result, services providers are seeing a surge in AI-led deal flow.
Gartner and IDC estimate that IT contracts in AI consulting and strategy will grow by 38% and 35–45%, respectively. GenAI implementation and MLOps contracts are expected to rise by 52% and 40–55%, respectively.
AI infrastructure management, data annotation, and LLM training services are also expanding rapidly, with growth ranging between 30% and 50%.
IDC expects that 60% of new IT services contracts signed in 2026 will include an AI component.
Interestingly, These AI-related contracts are also becoming longer and larger for outsourcing providers. Traditional IT maintenance deals typically lasted three to five years and were valued between $5 million and $50 million.
In contrast, new AI-led transformation deals are increasingly valued at $100 million to over $500 million and often run for five to ten years under outcome-based or managed services models.
Software spending is also expected to rise by 14% this year, as AI deployments drive additional investments in cybersecurity, system optimization, and analytics.
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