Omdia: Global AI Software Revenue Set to Exceed $200 Billion in 2026
Global AI software revenue is expected to surpass $200 billion in 2026, doubling its 2024 level, as demand for generative and agentic AI accelerates, according to new forecasts from Omdia.
The research firm’s latest Artificial Intelligence Software Market Forecasts represents the largest upward revision to its semiannual market outlook since the COVID-19 pandemic, reflecting faster-than-anticipated adoption of AI technologies across enterprise and cloud environments.
Generative AI revenue is projected to increase by 139% in 2026, significantly exceeding earlier expectations. Enterprises are expanding their use of AI assistants, coding tools and AI capabilities embedded within business applications. Agentic AI is also gaining momentum, although it remains at an earlier stage of adoption and is growing from a smaller revenue base.
The acceleration marks a departure from the typical technology adoption cycle, in which annual growth rates generally moderate as markets mature. Instead, generative and agentic AI are driving renewed expansion across the technology sector.
Omdia attributes the upward revision to growth across the AI value chain. Leading foundation model providers are recording year-on-year revenue increases of between three and ten times, while hyperscalers are reporting triple-digit growth in AI cloud segments. Enterprise software vendors are also competing to introduce AI-enhanced and AI-native products.
Despite the exceptional growth expected in 2026, Omdia anticipates that expansion rates will moderate in subsequent years as the market matures and moves towards a more conventional adoption trajectory.
Over the longer term, however, the AI software market is expected to maintain strong momentum. Omdia forecasts a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 30% between 2025 and 2031. Agentic AI is expected to be the fastest-growing segment, with a projected CAGR of 104% over the same period.
The forecast also points to changes in the composition of the AI software market. Generative AI is expected to overtake predictive AI as the largest revenue segment by 2028. Meanwhile, AI assistants are becoming increasingly autonomous, moving beyond responding to individual prompts to executing multi-step tasks on behalf of users.
“As generative assistants take on agentic capabilities and automated workflows increasingly replace human-directed prompting, the distinction between generative and agentic AI may become less meaningful. The market could instead be defined by differing levels of autonomy,” said Neil Dunay, Omdia Principal Market Forecaster.
