2026 Predictions: Devices & IT Infrastructure

TBR Senior Analyst Ben Carbonneau breaks down why he believes AI PCs will evolve from early-stage adoption to full-market dominance within the next decade and discusses the role Microsoft and Windows on ARM will play, how collaboration across the ecosystem could reshape competition, and why “prioritization for premiumization” may become the defining strategy for vendors heading into 2026.  

Additionally, from AI adoption at the edge and ROI-driven use cases, to the ripple effects of data center modernization and VMware decision making, TBR Principal Analyst Angela Lambert discusses how changing customer expectations will influence demand across the infrastructure stack in the new year. She also weighs in on the modernization versus transformation debate, shifts in AI-accelerated server investment, and which vendors — from silicon providers to OEMs — are best positioned to lead in 2026.

Episode highlights:

• AI PC margin and rate of adoption

• PC silicon manufacturing

• Data center modernization

“I think our, you know, TBR’s forecast, where we look at AI-accelerated servers, I think we’ll see a shift in mix where there is indeed more enterprise adoption. And we will absolutely be focusing our forecast on looking at the mix of what has been very predominantly CSP or Neocloud-led GPU adoption. That mix is actually going to start to shift in somewhat of a material way,” said Lambert.

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Edited by Haley Demers

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Art by Amanda Hamilton Sy

2026 Predictions: Devices & IT Infrastructure

TBR Talks Host Patrick Heffernan: Welcome to TBR Talks: Decoding Strategies and Ecosystems of the Globe’s Top Tech Firms. Where we talk business model disruption in the broad technology ecosystem from management consultancies to systems integrators, hyperscalers to independent software vendors, telecom operators to network and infrastructure vendors, and chip manufacturers to value-added resellers. We’ll be answering some of the key intelligence questions we’ve heard from executives and business unit leaders among the leading professional IT services and telecom vendors. 

I’m Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst, and today we’ll be talking about our 2026 Devices and Infrastructure predictions with Ben Carbonneau, Senior Analyst for TBR’s IT Infrastructure and Devices Practice, and Angela Lambert, Principal Analyst for TBR’s IT Infrastructure and Devices Practice. 

Prediction: AI PC margin and rate of adoption

Ben, welcome back to the podcast. Good to see you again. Just wanted to have a quick chat today about AI PCs and devices and what you’re going to be researching in 2026. And then maybe you could give us a prediction too.

Ben Carbonneau, TBR Senior Analyst: Sure. So, things we’re researching in 2026 really revolving around AI, as I’m sure it is in almost every practice area here at TBR. And one of those things for us specifically in the PC space is, of course, AI PC. So, there’s been a lot of talk about this from PC OEMs, whether that’s Dell, HP Inc, or Lenovo. Everybody wants AI PCs to take off. They’re higher revenue products for companies. And while right now, maybe they’re not higher margin, in the long run, we think that they will be. So I guess a prediction that I have for the AI PC market is that within the next decade, almost all Windows PCs will be AI PCs capable of using their NPUs or neural processing units to run background and then other AI enabled workloads more efficiently than what they would be able to do with a traditional CPU or GPU that’s on a computer right now.

Patrick: So, I will confess that I am not the hardware guy in this firm, but I do vaguely understand that as something gets more widely adopted and becomes more commoditized, the margin goes down. So why is AI PC going to be the opposite of that, where the more widely it’s adopted, the margins will actually get better?

Ben: So, I think maybe in the very long run, we’ll be in the same place where we’re at today with a traditional PC or a non-NPU enabled PC. I think in maybe the medium term would be a better way to classify it, that we will see margins go up. So right now, I think margins are definitely pressured a lot by just the cost of the silicon for the PC OEM. And what we’ve been seeing is a lot of discounting from your Intel’s or from your AMDs to drive the PC OEMs to integrate these chips into their offerings to bring to market. Because right now, what we’re seeing and what we’re hearing from a lot of our customers is that the value proposition, the value perceived by the AI PC, isn’t much right now. And that right now, with refreshes, PC refresh going on before the end of Windows 10 support, a lot of the AI PC refreshes where a company might be moving from a non-NPU enabled PC to an AI PC is really just for future-proofing and not for any application that’s here today.

Patrick: Interesting. So, it’s almost like cloud where you’re being sold on the cost saving, but you’re actually going to end up paying more. So, with AIPC, you’re future-proofing now. And actually, it’s probably smarter to do that because whoever comes after you is going to end up paying more for their AI PC than if you’re jumping on the bandwagon now, right?

Prediction: PC silicon manufacturing

Ben: Sure, yeah. And I think another thing that we’ll be watching really closely is there’s a few dynamics, maybe 3 dynamics that I really see influencing the PC market. One of them is what Intel’s doing with its manufacturing of its third generation Core Ultra chip or its third generation AI PC chip with their NPU. What we’ve heard from people around the industry is that they’re really going to be driving a lot of manufacturing of this chip with their silicon fabrication partners. And that’s to reduce cost because I think really, when I think about the main dictating factor of margin on a piece of PC silicon, it’s really economies of scale. So, the more they manufacture, the lower that they can get the cost. And then that also helps the PC OEMs and their margin. So, I think the silicon vendors are at the top of this pyramid.

Patrick: They are.

Ben: But I think as the silicon vendors get a little bit more profitable, then maybe they share a little bit of that extra margin with the PC OEMs. And it kind of flows down to the channel and all the other players. 

Patrick: Excellent. Yeah, that’s a great prediction because it’s also something we can measure. We can sit here in a year from now and say, are we seeing signs that that is really happening so that it’ll happen in the medium term, as you said. And honestly, I want to thank you, Ben. We’ve been talking for a solid 10 minutes about silicon and chips and devices and AI, PCs, and not once have we said liquid cooling. 

Ben: *laughs*

Patrick: So, we’re pretty excited about that. Thank you very much for coming back to the podcast, and we’ll have you back on soon.

Ben: Yeah, thank you for having me.

What to look for in TBR’s 2026 IT Infrastructure portfolio

Patrick: Angela, welcome back to the podcast.

Angela Lambert, TBR Principal Analyst: Thanks for having me.

Patrick: So, Angela, what are you most excited about researching, diving deeper into in the infrastructure portfolio this coming year?

Angela: Well, I think there’s probably 3 topics that I’m looking forward to the most in IT infrastructure as we start heading into 2026. So of course, first we have to talk about AI, right? 

Patrick: Of course.

Angela: And how the adoption of AI is happening on-prem. It’s been slower than I think many have anticipated over the last year or so. And I think going into 2026, we’re going to see more about making AI more accessible on-prem. There’s going to be new form factors and ways that that’s going to happen. So, we’re looking forward to covering that. 

Then there’s kind of the rest of the IT infrastructure, right, of business going on as usual. And a lot of that boils down to hybrid cloud. And we’ll be looking a lot at automation as well as how customers are reevaluating their on-prem landscapes. And there’s a number of drivers that are impacting the types of infrastructure that buyers want to purchase. 

Which brings us to my third research area, which is what the customers are saying. So that’s always my favorite part of planning the portfolio for the coming year. And that’s diving into our customer research on their top concerns and their overall strategies coming up for this year and the following two years as well. So that’s going to really dive deep on the first two points that I mentioned.

Patrick: And on the first point around infrastructure and on-prem, does that include like physical AI and edge and devices? Like sort of how does that fit into the infrastructure picture?

Angela: Absolutely. I think that plays a huge role. And I think that edge is really an area where we may see more AI adoption, especially because I think that’s something that can be more accessible in terms of the investment and also the ROI potential is really strong in some particular use cases around manufacturing, for example, being one.

Patrick: Right. And when you think about what drives your research overall, how much of it is driven by questions that you get from the companies that you’re covering and how much is driven by questions that come from the clients that you’re talking to, the customers, and then how much comes from ecosystem partners to the companies that you’re covering?

Angela: Well, I think the way I see it is, two really big drivers, right? So, there’s the questions that come from vendors and partners in the space are often driven by the loudest trends you hear about in the market. So that’s always going to be an important driver in our portfolio. But on the other hand, everyone needs to keep their businesses running. There’s very mature businesses within IT infrastructure that are ripe for optimization. And we get a lot of questions about those things too, like managed services and how customers, you know, what they want, but also how vendors can better deliver on those. So, we see just as much question on the existing portfolio as we do on some of the top trend topics.

Predictions: New form factors and data center modernization

Patrick: Excellent. Thanks. And now let’s pivot to predictions. So, I would love to say, give me your top ten, but why don’t we restrict it just to a few? What are some of the things you anticipate we’re going to see change in the infrastructure space in 2026?

Angela: Sure. So, I think I hinted at one in some of the AI conversation, but I think that new form factors, and by new form factors, I mean doing AI without needing a huge investment in liquid cooling is going to help more enterprises be able to adopt AI. So, we’ll be seeing a proliferation of use cases, and many of those will be edge related. So, that’s going to be a big one we’re tracking. 

Then on the hybrid cloud side, we, I think in the last year, there’s been a bit of a pause in reflection on how customers want to move forward with modernizing their data centers. Much of that is driven by whether or not they want to continue working with VMware or find other alternatives. I think we will see more customers making decisions in 2026 and starting to plan out their journeys, whether that’s modernizing their data center, moving to workloads to public cloud, combinations of those. So that’s something also that we’re going to be seeing a lot of activity on.

Patrick: And when you said- so to me, I see a distinction between modernization, which is just sort of bringing things up to speed, getting the most out of what you have, and then transformation, which is taking a technology and changing your business model or changing, you know, making a dramatic change to what you’re actually doing and what the outcomes are going to be. When you think about in the infrastructure space, what rough percentages or where would you say most of the revenue is going to happen for the infrastructure players? Is it going to be around modernization or is it going to be around transformation?

Angela: I think that’s a tricky question. 

Patrick: It is.

Angela: But I think across customer types, we’re going to see a lot of differences. And I wouldn’t specify it to industries or company sizes per se, but those who are really trying to make the most of what they have or deal with the restrictions of what they have are really more in that modernization space where new infrastructure can help them consolidate significantly and be more efficient. Then we’ll see another class of customers that is probably the smaller group that’s going down a different journey of changing how their business is actually going to operate.

Prediction: AI demand and investment in 2026

Patrick: Right. So, then what does it say if you put all of that together? And I know at the beginning, you talked a little bit about where the demand is going to be for AI and sort of how that ties to liquid cooling and the expense of that. But so, when you think about where we’ll be with respect to AI demand in the end of 2026, and how that relates to infrastructure. Do you see, because we’re already starting to see where there are pockets of sort of uncertainty about how much more enterprises are going to invest in AI. Do you see that changing over 2026? Do you see an acceleration in terms of adoption and demand, or do you think there’ll be, we’re going to go into a little bit of a cooling off period?

Angela: I think our, you know, TBR’s forecast, where we look at AI-accelerated servers, I think we’ll see a shift in mix where there is indeed more enterprise adoption. And we will absolutely be focusing our forecast on looking at the mix of what has been very predominantly CSP or Neocloud-led GPU adoption. 

Patrick: Right.

Angela: That mix is actually going to start to shift in somewhat of a material way. Obviously, those other companies are not slowing down their investments, but there will certainly be increased investments with enterprise.

Prediction: Vendors expected to lead in 2026

Patrick: Okay, last question then on predictions. I have to ask, because at TBR, we focus on the individual companies and we understand the market based on what those individual companies are doing. So, if you had to say, we’ll just pick the leaders. We’re not going to pick the laggards. I’m not going to single them out this time, but who at the end of 2026 are you going to say had the best year?

Angela: Oh, wow. Okay. Well, as part of our coverage, we, in addition to IT infrastructure, look at the components of that as well. So, we will see some great things out of the silicon providers, NVIDIA, less on the data center side, also AMD will have a good year. I think that on the infrastructure side, we will see a great year from Dell Technologies. We’ll see a Neocloud great year from HP and Supermicro as well.

Patrick: Okay. And those are three companies that I know are very active in partnering across the ecosystem. So, their success then lends itself to or can be a catalyst for success among their ecosystem partners. So, it’ll be, it’s going to be a crazy year.

Angela: It will be. Looking forward to it.

Patrick: So am I. Excellent. Thanks. 

Final thoughts

Next week, in our season four finale, I’ll be speaking with John Caucis and James Wichert about 2026 Federal IT Services predictions. 

Don’t forget to send us your key intelligence questions on business strategy, ecosystems, and management consulting through the form in the show notes below. Visit tbri.com to learn how we help tech companies, large and small, answer these questions with the research, data, and analysis that my guests bring to this conversation every week. 

Once again, I’m your host, Patrick Heffernan, Principal Analyst at TBR. Thanks for joining us, and see you next week.

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