Global AI spending forecast to hit $2.52T in 2026, says Al‑Sharq citing analysts

A $2.5‑trillion annual spend would make AI one of the largest capex and opex line items in the global economy, rivaling sectors like telecoms and parts of energy. Even allowing for forecast exuberance, the direction is clear: organizations are preparing to treat AI not as a peripheral IT expense but as core infrastructure. The Al‑Sharq piece usefully echoes a point often lost in the hype—that successful adopters are constrained less by budget than by organizational readiness, governance and talent. ([al-sharq.com](https://al-sharq.com/article/19/01/2026/25-%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%8A%D9%84%D9%8A%D9%88%D9%86-%D8%AF%D9%88%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B1-%D8%AD%D8%AC%D9%85-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A5%D9%86%D9%81%D8%A7%D9%82-%D8%B9%D9%84%D9%89-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%B0%D9%83%D8%A7%D8%A1-%D8%A7%D9%84%D8%A7%D8%B5%D8%B7%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B9%D9%8A))

For the race to AGI, this tidal wave of spending does two things. First, it underwrites the fixed costs of frontier R&D: more enterprise demand for applied AI justifies the multi‑billion‑dollar data center projects and model‑training runs labs are planning. Second, it creates a flywheel: as more industries embed AI into critical workflows—finance, logistics, healthcare—the tolerance for failure drops, pushing labs toward more robust, interpretable and controllable systems. That, in turn, is likely to accelerate the development of techniques that are also useful for aligning very general systems.

The geographic lens also matters. Coverage from a Gulf outlet underlines how energy-rich economies are positioning themselves as both major funders and early adopters of AI, potentially tying AI infrastructure to long-term energy contracts and sovereign strategies.