What AI's Growing Share of Tech Spending Means for Enterprises in 2027
AI Business, Wednesday, November 4th, 2026
Forrester's Brian Hopkins explains how AI's growing share of tech spending in 2027 pressures IT budgets and how CIOs should prioritize.
Forrester forecasts that AI will make up about 20% of business technology spending in 2027, driven mostly by infrastructure, compute, model access and subscriptions, with token and usage pricing making costs harder to predict.
In this Q&A, analyst Brian Hopkins says firms are squeezing IT services contracts and insourcing work to fund AI, but should not cut security or keep delaying ERP modernization.
He urges measuring AI value across productivity, engagement and transformation rather than productivity alone, and warns of a trust tax for testing, guardrails, monitoring and governance of agents.
Priorities are security, data and the AI platform, tied to business metrics with accountable owners.