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Spending on Cognitive/AI Systems to Reach $19.1 Billion in 2018- IDC
New spending guide revealed by International Data Corporation (IDC) shows that worldwide spending on cognitive and artificial intelligence (AI) systems will reach $19.1 billion in 2018, an increase of 54.2% over the amount spent in 2017.
With industries investing aggressively in projects that utilize cognitive/AI software capabilities, the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Cognitive Artificial Intelligence Systems Spending Guide forecasts cognitive and AI spending will grow to $52.2 billion in 2021 and achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 46.2% over the 2016-2021 forecast period.
David Schubmehl, research director, Cognitive/Artificial Intelligence Systems at IDC, said “Interest and awareness of AI is at a fever pitch.
“Every industry and every organization should be evaluating AI to see how it will affect their business processes and go-to-market efficiencies.
“IDC has estimated that by 2019, 40% of digital transformation initiatives will use AI services and by 2021, 75% of enterprise applications will use AI.
“From predictions, recommendations, and advice to automated customer service agents and intelligent process automation, AI is changing the face of how we interact with computer systems.”
Retail will overtake banking in 2018 to become the industry leader in terms of cognitive/AI spending.
Retail firms will invest $3.4 billion this year on a range of AI use cases, including automated customer service agents, expert shopping advisors and product recommendations, and merchandising for omni channel operations.
Much of the $3.3 billion spent by the banking industry will go toward automated threat intelligence and prevention systems, fraud analysis and investigation, and program advisors and recommendation systems.
Discrete manufacturing will be the third largest industry for AI spending with $2.0 billion going toward a range of use cases including automated preventative maintenance and quality management investigation and recommendation systems.
The fourth largest industry, healthcare providers, will allocate most of its $1.7 billion investment to diagnosis and treatment systems.
Marianne Daquila, research manager, Customer Insights & Analysis IDC, said “Enterprise digital transformation strategies are increasingly including multiple cognitive/artificial intelligence use cases,”
“Business transformation is occurring across all industries as successful companies embrace the array and potential impact of these solutions.
“Automated customer service agents, increased public safety, preventative maintenance, reduction of fraud, and improved healthcare diagnosis are just the tip of the iceberg driving spend today.
“With double-digit year-over-year spending growth forecast, IDC expects to see an increase in general use cases, as well as a refinement of industry-specific use cases.”
The cognitive/AI use cases that will see the largest spending totals in 2018 are: automated customer service agents ($2.4 billion) with significant investments from the retail and telecommunications industries; automated threat intelligence and prevention systems ($1.5 billion) with the banking, utilities, and telecommunications industries as the leading industries; and sales process recommendation and automation ($1.45 billion) spending led by the retail and media industries.
Three other use cases will be close behind in terms of global spending in 2018: automated preventive maintenance; diagnosis and treatment systems; and fraud analysis and investigation.
The use cases that will see the fastest spending growth over the 2016-2021 forecast period are: public safety and emergency response (75.4% CAGR), pharmaceutical research and discovery (70.5% CAGR), and expert shopping advisors and product recommendations (67.3% CAGR).
A little more than half of all cognitive/AI spending throughout the forecast will go toward cognitive software.
The largest software category is cognitive applications, which includes cognitively-enabled process and industry applications that automatically learn, discover, and make recommendations or predictions.
The other software category is cognitive platforms, which facilitate the development of intelligent, advisory, and cognitively enabled applications.
Industries will also invest in IT services to help with the development and implementation of their cognitive/AI systems and business services such as consulting and horizontal business process outsourcing related to these systems.
The smallest category of technology spending will be the hardware (servers and storage) needed to support the systems.
On a geographic basis, the United States will deliver more than three quarters of all spending on cognitive/AI systems in 2018, led by the retail and banking industries.
Western Europe will be the second largest region in 2018, led by retail, discrete manufacturing and banking.
The strongest spending growth over the five-year forecast will be in Japan (73.5% CAGR) and Asia/Pacific (excluding Japan and China) (72.9% CAGR). China will also experience strong spending growth throughout the forecast (68.2% CAGR).
“The latest iteration of the Cognitive/AI Spending Guide is a roadmap for the journey of organizational digital transformation through the use of AI, deep learning, and machine learning,”
“Organizations should be evaluating and starting to use AI throughout their systems and the Cognitive/AI Spending Guide is an indispensable resource in that effort,” added Schubmehl.
The Worldwide Semiannual Cognitive Artificial Intelligence Systems Spending Guide sizes spending for technologies that analyze, organize, access, and provide advisory services based on a range of unstructured information.
The spending guide quantifies the cognitive computing opportunity by providing data for more than 20 use cases across 16 industries in eight regions.
Data is also available for the related hardware, software, and services categories.
Unlike any other research in the industry, the detailed segmentation and timely, global data is designed to help suppliers targeting the market to identify market opportunities and execute an effective strategy.
Airtel Nigeria has reaffirmed its long-term commitment to strengthening Nigeria’s digital infrastructure and data access to bridge gaps in connectivity and unlock new opportunities in the country.
The company restated this commitment during a recent high-level inspection tour of the Nxtra Data Centre that is being developed through Nxtra by Airtel Africa at Eko Atlantic, Lagos, the highly rated smart city with ambition to become the Data Centre hub of Nigeria.
The inspection tour was led by the Chief Executive Officer of Airtel Nigeria, Dinesh Balsingh and the Chief Executive Officer of Nxtra by Airtel Africa, Yashnath Issur, with the esteemed chairman of Eko Atlantic Mr. Gabbi Massoud, the CEO of the lead Engineering firm Design Group Limited, Mr. Bayo Odunlami and tech journalists.
The Nxtra Data Centre went through a stringent design validation process and cleared the approval to proceed construction from Eko Atlantic.
Commenting on the developments, Mr Issur said the site visit was a milestone marker and an indication of the company’s commitment to delivering the world-class digital facility on time and ensure that, ultimately, the investments deliver reliable, secure, world-class services for Nigeria and the rest of the continent.
“This Nxtra Data Centre in Lagos represents a critical part of our long-term vision for Nigeria’s digital ecosystem. Today’s visit allows us to review progress, engage our stakeholders, and ensure that our infrastructure investments continue to meet global standards and local needs.
“This data centre will deliver critical high multi megawatt capacity in line with hyperscale customers and enable high density environment. We are putting the infra to bring the cloud to Nigeria,” he said.
The data centre, set to be the largest in Nigeria, is being established to deliver hyperscale and edge facilities across key African markets. With a load of 38 Megawatts, the Lagos facility is expected to serve as a major hub for data hosting, cloud services, content distribution, artificial intelligence, and enterprise solutions in West Africa.
In his remarks, Mr Balsingh reiterated that the data centre was progressing steadily towards the previously announced 2028 go live date.
“Since the announcement of this project, our focus has been on building a world-class facility that supports Africa’s digital transformation agenda. We are encouraged by the progress recorded so far and remain committed to delivering a secure, energy-efficient, and future-ready data centre for Nigeria,” he said.
During the tour, stakeholders were ushered through key sections of the site, including piling zones, where required structural requirements have been tested. Technical teams provided briefings on infrastructure design, security architecture, redundancy systems, and sustainability measures being implemented to ensure reliability and operational excellence.
Strategically located close to major fibre routes and undersea cable landing stations, the Eko Atlantic data centre is designed to enhance Nigeria’s data sovereignty, reduce latency, and improve access to reliable digital services for private and enterprise customers, significantly boosting the country’s data hosting capacity and supporting emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud computing.
Mr. Massoud noted that the inspection tour underscored the city’s dedication to infrastructure of global relevance.
“Eko Atlantic as a city with high quality infrastructure will contribute positively to boost the economy of Nigeria and is a perfect place for the development of the digital infrastructure of Nigeria. The Nxtra data centre reflects the calibre of projects we seek to attract — long-term, technology-driven investments built to the highest global standards.
Today’s visit affirms the rigour of the planning and execution process by Nxtra, and the commitment of Eko Atlantic to facilitate and promote the Nigeria’s evolving digital ecosystem,” he said.
Through this ongoing investment, Airtel Nigeria and Nxtra continue to demonstrate their commitment to building infrastructure that enables innovation, supports economic development, and accelerates Nigeria’s digital transformation.
Nxtra by Airtel is developing a network of hyperscale data centres across the continent. Besides Lagos, construction of a new data centre has also commenced in Nairobi, Kenya and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Google has partnered with top African research institutions to unveil WAXAL, a massive open-access speech dataset aimed at giving over 100 million people across Sub-Saharan Africa a stronger voice in the AI future.
The initiative, announced Monday, targets a key digital gap by supplying high-quality data for 21 local languages, such as Hausa, Yoruba, Luganda, and Acholi. It includes 1,250 hours of transcribed natural speech and more than 20 hours of studio-grade recordings for advanced synthetic voice tech.
Voice AI has exploded globally, yet Africa’s 2,000-plus languages suffer from severe data shortages, sidelining hundreds of millions from native-tongue tech access. WAXAL, three years in the making with Google funding, changes that equation.
“This dataset lays the groundwork for students, researchers, and entrepreneurs to craft tech in their own languages, impacting over 100 million lives,” said Aisha Walcott-Bryantt, Head of Google Research Africa.
She highlighted its potential for African innovators to develop educational tools and voice services that spark economic growth continent-wide.
Community-led from the start, the project involved Makerere University (Uganda), University of Ghana, Digital Umuganda (Rwanda), and others. These partners own the data outright, pioneering fair AI collaboration models.
Covered languages: Acholi, Akan, Dagaare, Dagbani, Dholuo, Ewe, Fante, Fulani (Fula), Hausa, Igbo, Ikposo (Kposo), Kikuyu, Lingala, Luganda, Malagasy, Masaaba, Nyankole, Rukiga, Shona, Soga (Lusoga), Swahili, Yoruba.
WAXAL goes live today. Details at goo.gle/IntroducingWaxal.
Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) has unveiled its Q4 2025 Network Performance Reports, showcasing nationwide quality boosts fueled by over $1 billion in industry investments and sharper regulatory focus.
NCC
Speaking at the launch, Dr. Aminu Maida, executive vice chairman, NCC, hailed the Ookla-backed data as proof of NCC’s drive for transparent, evidence-driven oversight of Nigeria’s digital growth.
The reports track real-user experiences across cities, villages, highways, and nascent 5G areas, revealing faster median download speeds in both urban and rural spots versus Q3 2025.
Video streaming quality gaps between city and countryside have shrunk, thanks to a beefed-up 4G network—yet 5G rollout lags, upload speeds falter, and coverage holes linger in spots.
Maida said NCC is leaning on operators to fix these via spectrum tweaks, infrastructure drives, and stricter service rules, with 2025’s 2,850 new sites already paying off in broader reach and capacity.
Operators pledge even bigger spends in 2026 to keep the momentum, aiming for top-tier connectivity and economic inclusion for all Nigerians.
“We’ll turn these insights into real gains in service and access,” Maida affirmed, calling for sustained industry teamwork.
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