Summer 2026 Macro Views: AI Is Reshaping the Technology Budget

See how technology leaders are funding AI spending overruns, and which vendors gain or lose as budgets shift.

Enterprise AI adoption is now near-universal, but budget discipline has not caught up. Nearly half of organizations report AI spending running over plan, and many are covering the overruns by cutting contractors, legacy infrastructure, and non-AI software. The Summer 2026 Macro Views Survey captures how these trade-offs are reshaping technology budgets, from a hardware pricing surge to the categories that remain protected no matter the pressure.

Grounded in direct feedback from the ETR Community, this report captures forward-looking spending intentions from over 1,600 technology leaders, collected weeks before results appear in the earnings cycle. The data shows where enterprise technology dollars are moving, which categories are gaining or losing, and how vendor demand is holding up as budgets shift.

Download the findings summary and get access to the full report, including vendor-level Net Score performance and breakouts by enterprise size, industry, geography, technology category, and AI adoption strategy.

About the Macro Views Survey

The Macro Views Survey consistently tracks and updates core trends like budget growth, spending priorities, and organizational trends. Fielded to ETR's proprietary community of technology leaders, the survey captures forward-looking spending intentions rather than backward-looking results, giving readers an early view of where enterprise technology budgets are headed. The Summer 2026 survey drew responses from 1,636 technology leaders, including 275 from Fortune 500 and 393 from Global 2000 organizations. Over three-quarters of respondents hold C-suite, VP, or Director titles, providing a direct line into the leaders who set and control enterprise IT budgets.

Inside the Summer 2026 Findings

AI budgets are running over, and something has to give: 47% of organizations report AI spending moderately or substantially above plan. Among those reallocating budget to cover the overruns, 61% cut external contractors and consultants, 49% pull from legacy infrastructure, and 36% harvest non-AI software licenses.
Hardware overtakes Software: Hardware spending growth accelerated to 4.0%, passing Software at 3.6%, a one-year low. Hardware pricing surged again to 6.9%, up from 5.5% last survey and nearly double January's rate.
AI is now near-universal, and headcount is feeling it: Just 4% of organizations report not leveraging AI. Three-quarters cite AI-driven productivity gains, while limiting future headcount (34%) and strategically reducing headcount (20%) both hit series highs.
In-house AI builds edge out vendor solutions on ROI: 16% of organizations report sustained ROI at scale from building in-house, compared with 13% for external vendor solutions, even as usage stays split between direct models and embedded vendor tools.
Security remains the protected category: Security software leads all subcategory growth at 7.8%, more than four times HCM, and just 18% of organizations reallocating software budget for AI pull from cybersecurity.
IT spending still growing, below Winter optimism: CY2026 growth estimates ticked up to +3.8%, above Spring's +3.6% but under Winter’s +4.6%, with 72% of technology leaders planning to increase spend.
Vendor strength beats budget direction: Anthropic leads all vendors in Net Score, overall and among Global 2000 accounts, while Oracle, VMware, and Citrix stay negative even among customers increasing IT spend. Nine sectors have now declined for three straight years.

Download the Summer 2026 Macro Views Survey Infographic for a quick, visual summary of the key findings, built to scan fast and share internally.

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