GoKawiilServers running x86 processors from AMD and Intel used to rule the market, both unit and money-wise, less than a decade ago, but fast forward to today, Arm-based machines command well over 45% of the server market, according to data released by IDC. While technically x86 machines still control 52% of the market in terms of revenue, the real winner is a different category altogether: GPU- and ASIC/FPGA-accelerated systems, which generated over 70% of the global server revenue in the first quarter of 2026.
Server market reaches $122.6 billion in a single quarter, Dell leads the game
IDC estimates that the global server market generated a record $122.6 billion in revenue in the first quarter of 2026, up 30.4% year-over-year, as spending on AI infrastructure remained particularly strong.
Sales of ODM Direct servers — custom machines ordered by hyperscalers that run merchant or custom silicon — accounted for 50.2% of the revenue (down from 64.1% in Q1 2025) and reached $61.53 billion, up modest 2.1% year-over-year*. By contrast, sales of standard servers from well-known brands grew at a much higher pace, which suggests that branded vendors such as Dell, HPE, Supermicro, and others won a larger portion of AI infrastructure deployments than they did a year earlier. That was probably made possible by accelerating enterprise AI deployment and sovereign AI projects, which tend to buy machines from branded vendors, as well as hyperscalers increasingly turning to well-known suppliers for AI hardware.
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Swipe to scroll horizontally Company Q1 2026 Revenue Q1 2026 Share Q1 2025 Revenue Q1 2025 Share YoY Growth Dell Technologies $20,280.8M 16.5% $5,893.3M 6.3% +244.1% Super Micro $9,331.0M 7.6% $4,075.8M 4.3% +128.9% Lenovo $5,621.8M 4.6% $4,118.4M 4.4% +36.5% IEIT Systems $4,012.0M 3.3% $4,313.7M 4.6% -7.0% HPE $3,719.5M 3.0% $3,173.9M 3.4% +17.2% ODM Direct $61,537.9M 50.2% $60,278.9M 64.1% +2.1% Rest of Market $18,114.7M 14.8% $12,212.4M 13.0% +48.3% Total $122,617.8M 100.0% $94,066.4M 100.0% +30.4%
When it comes to vendor rankings, Dell remained the largest server supplier by revenue with a 16.5% share of the market after its revenue surged 244.1% year-over-year to $20.3 billion, which was driven by exceptionally strong AI server demand. Supermicro remained in second place with $9.3 billion in revenue and a growth of 128.9%.
Lenovo ranked third with $5.6 billion and 36.5% growth, while IEIT Systems (which is a part of the sanctioned Inspur Group) dropped to fourth after revenue declined 7.0% to $4.0 billion. HPE was No.5 with $3.7 billion in revenue, up 17.2%. Other vendors — from Asus to Atos and from ASRock Rack to Gigabyte — commanded 14.8% of the market with $18.11 billion in revenue, up from 13% and $12.21 billion in the same quarter a year ago.
Arm-based machines rapidly gain revenue share
As AI servers dominated the market in Q1 2026, systems with various types of accelerators accounted for over 70% of the revenue. However, the rise of Arm-powered machines is the elephant in the room that is hard to miss, as it represents a tectonic shift in the whole market, both to the Arm instruction set architecture (ISA) in general and custom-built Arm CPUs designed by hyperscalers.
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