The worldwide server market reached $166.3 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 52% from a year earlier, according to IDC figures reported by EMSNow. Servers built directly for cloud companies by contract manufacturers took 53.9% of that. Dell was the largest named vendor at 13.4%, and Supermicro was second at 6.1%. GPU-accelerated servers were 52.6% of revenue.
Vendor Shares, Q2 2026
| Vendor | Revenue | Share | Year over year |
|---|---|---|---|
| ODM direct | $89.7B | 53.9% | +35.2% |
| Dell Technologies | $22.2B | 13.4% | +165.4% |
| Supermicro | $10.2B | 6.1% | +97.2% |
| Lenovo | $8.4B | 5.1% | +99.6% |
| HPE | $5.9B | 3.5% | +46.0% |
| IEIT Systems | $4.0B | 2.4% | -8.1% |
| Rest of market | $26.0B | 15.6% | +53.4% |
| Total | $166.3B | 100% | +52.0% |
These are shares of the whole server market. IDC does not publish a vendor split for AI servers alone in this release, so they should not be quoted as AI server shares. "ODM direct" covers contract manufacturers that sell straight to cloud companies. IDC does not break it down by manufacturer here.
How Much of the Market Is AI?
| Category | Q2 2026 revenue | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| GPU-accelerated servers | $87.4B | 52.6% of market revenue, up 28.1% |
| Other accelerated servers (FPGA and ASIC) | $27.5B | Up 237.6% |
| Non-x86 servers | $74.4B | 44.8% of market revenue |
Servers with custom chips are growing about eight times faster than GPU servers, from a smaller base. The same pattern shows in chip makers' results. See AI chip revenue by company.
What the Vendors Report Themselves
| Company | Period | Figure |
|---|---|---|
| Dell | Quarter ended July 31, 2026 | $16.4B of AI servers shipped, up 100%. $60.9B of AI server orders. $95B backlog |
| Dell | Fiscal 2027 guidance | AI server revenue of $74.0B, raised from $60.0B |
| Supermicro | Quarter ended September 30, 2026 | Net sales of $19.9B, against $5.0B a year earlier. Gross margin 12.7% |
| Supermicro | Fiscal 2027 guidance | Net sales of $72B to $82B |
Supermicro does not report AI revenue separately. Its 12.7% gross margin, next to Nvidia's 75%, shows where the profit in an AI server sits.
Forecasts
- AI server shipments: TrendForce raised its 2026 growth forecast in August from 28% to nearly 31%.
- Cloud spending: TrendForce expects combined 2026 capital spending by nine large cloud providers to exceed US$886.7 billion, about 90% more than 2025. See the hyperscaler capex map.
Methodology
Market and vendor figures are from IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Server Tracker for Q2 2026 as reported by EMSNow. We did not read IDC's own release. Company figures are from Dell's and Supermicro's earnings releases. Forecasts are from TrendForce. Revenue is rounded to one decimal place. This page is not investment advice. Status as of November 13, 2026.