Big data is now one of the largest segments of the technology economy, and it keeps growing as fast as the world creates data. Below are 40 current statistics on market size, data volume, cloud and infrastructure, jobs, and privacy. Every number is dated and traced to a primary source, and we refresh the page each quarter.
Top Big Data Statistics for 2026
The most-cited numbers, current as of mid-2026:
- The global big data and analytics market is worth $394.7 billion in 2025, on track for $1.18 trillion by 2034. (Fortune Business Insights, Jun 2026)
- The world creates roughly 181 zettabytes of data per year as of 2025. (Statista / IDC Global DataSphere)
- Worldwide public cloud end-user spending reached $723.4 billion in 2025. (Gartner, Nov 2024)
- 64% of organizations now run relational databases as a cloud service. (Flexera, Mar 2026)
- 29% of cloud spend is wasted, the first increase in five years. (Flexera, Mar 2026)
- An estimated $122 billion of cloud infrastructure spend is wasted in a year (Red9 analysis of Gartner and Flexera data).
- 73.8% of the world's population, about 6.12 billion people, is online. (DataReportal, Apr 2026)
Overall Big Data Industry Statistics
How big the industry is, how much data exists, and what companies get from it.
The global big data and analytics market is valued at $394.7 billion in 2025. (Fortune Business Insights)
The market has grown steadily, from $169 billion in 2018 to an estimated $394.7 billion in 2025, more than doubling in seven years. Cloud adoption, machine learning, and the flood of connected-device data are the main engines behind the climb.
The market is projected to reach $1.18 trillion by 2034. (Fortune Business Insights)
That implies a compound annual growth rate of about 12.8% through 2034. In effect the market is on track to roughly triple again from its 2025 level, making big data one of the faster-growing segments of enterprise IT.
The Big Data Market Is on Track to Nearly Triple by 2034
01Global big data & analytics market value, USD
The world created about 147 zettabytes of data in 2024, rising to an estimated 181 zettabytes in 2025. (Statista)
Annual data creation has more than doubled in a few years and keeps climbing as more of life moves online. The hard part is no longer generating data but storing and securing it, since the world keeps only a fraction of what it produces.
The world created, captured, copied and consumed roughly 402.74 million terabytes of data per day in 2024. (Statista)
Across a full year that daily rate works out to about 147 zettabytes, the 2024 total; the 2025 estimate is higher still at around 181 zettabytes. Most of that data is never stored, but the share organizations do keep is growing faster than budgets, which is why storage and compute cost control has become a board-level concern.
The World's Data Nearly Tripled in Five Years
02Data created worldwide per year, zettabytes
Worldwide AI infrastructure spending hit $318 billion in 2025, more than double the $153 billion spent in 2024. (IDC)
AI is now the largest single driver of new data and data-infrastructure investment, which is why big data and AI budgets increasingly overlap. The jump from $153 billion in 2024 to $318 billion in 2025 is the steepest one-year rise IDC has recorded in the category.
Only 46.4% of organizations report significant business value from their data and AI investments. (Wavestone)
A survey of 125 large enterprises found that fewer than half see high or significant value from their data and AI investments. It is a reminder that collecting data and profiting from it are different problems, and most of that gap is organizational rather than technical.
92% of executives say the main barrier to becoming data-driven is people, not technology. (Wavestone)
In the same survey, just 8% blamed technology; the rest pointed to culture, process, and organizational change as the real obstacles. It is why buying more tools rarely fixes a stalled data program.
There are 5,427 data centers in the United States. (Cloudscene)
The US has by far the most data centers of any country, the physical backbone that stores and moves the world's data. That concentration is also why US power and water supplies are now part of the AI-infrastructure conversation.
The colocation data center market is worth $104.2 billion in 2025. (MarketsandMarkets)
Third-party "colo" facilities let companies rent data-center space rather than build their own. For most organizations, renting capacity is now faster and cheaper than constructing a facility, which keeps the segment expanding.
The median US data scientist earns $112,590 per year. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
The role is among the better-paid in technology, reflecting steady demand for people who can turn raw data into decisions. Wages have held up even as adjacent tech roles softened, because the work is hard to automate away.
Worldwide AI infrastructure spending is on track to exceed $1 trillion by 2029. (IDC)
The same forecast that pegs 2025 AI-infrastructure spend at $318 billion sees it more than tripling again by the end of the decade. If it holds, AI infrastructure alone would rival the entire big-data-and-analytics market.
Demand for data scientists is projected to grow 34% between 2024 and 2034. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics)
That works out to roughly 23,400 openings a year, far faster than the average US occupation. Demand this far ahead of supply is exactly why so much data and IT work gets outsourced, a shift we cover in our outsourcing statistics.
The colocation data center market is forecast to nearly double to $204.4 billion by 2030. (MarketsandMarkets)
Demand for third-party data-center space keeps rising as companies avoid the capital cost of building their own. AI training and inference are accelerating the trend, pushing operators to add capacity faster than in any recent year.
Industry-Specific Big Data Statistics
How individual sectors put big data to work.
The healthcare big data analytics market is worth about $52.1 billion in 2025. (IMARC Group)
Healthcare is one of the fastest-growing markets for analytics as providers lean on data for diagnostics, operations, and cost control. Pressure to cut costs while improving outcomes makes analytics one of the few investments that targets both at once.
Big data in supply chain management is worth about $8.8 billion in 2025. (Market Research Future)
After the pandemic-era disruptions, supply chain operators adopted analytics to manage inventory and respond to demand swings; the market is forecast to keep growing into the 2030s.
Netflix has estimated its recommendation system is worth about $1 billion a year. (Inside Big Data)
This widely cited figure comes from 2018 and remains the classic example of big data's commercial value: Netflix has said its recommendation engine influences roughly 80% of what people watch, improving retention.
Healthcare big data analytics is forecast to surpass $130 billion by 2034. (IMARC Group)
On its current trajectory the market more than doubles from its 2025 level by 2034. AI-assisted diagnostics, population-health analytics, and the push to wring efficiency out of stretched health systems are the main drivers.
Big Data User Statistics
The people generating all of this data.
73.8% of the world's population is online. (DataReportal)
About 6.12 billion people use the internet as of April 2026, and every one of them generates data through the platforms and services they use. Each new user adds to the raw material the big-data economy runs on.
The average internet user spends 6 hours and 38 minutes online each day. (DataReportal)
More devices, apps, and connected services keep pushing the figure up over time. Every one of those minutes is logged and fed into recommendation and ad systems, making attention itself one of the most-tracked datasets in the world.
Google holds 90.39% of the global search market. (Statcounter Global Stats)
As of May 2026, Google still dominates search worldwide, and every query is a data point about intent and behavior. That scale feeds a loop, more data trains better models and targets better ads, that rivals have struggled to break.
Google Still Owns 90% of Search
06Global search engine market share, May 2026
Around 80% of the world's data is unstructured. (IDC / Seagate)
Text, images, video, email, and social posts do not fit neatly into traditional databases, which is exactly why big data tools exist. This widely used figure traces to a 2018 IDC forecast and is best read as an order-of-magnitude estimate rather than a fresh measurement.
73% of US adults feel they have little or no control over the data companies collect about them. (Pew Research Center)
Data breaches and pervasive tracking have left most Americans wary of how their personal information is used. That distrust is now shaping regulation, from state privacy laws to tighter rules on storing and sharing customer data.
Bing is a distant second in global search at 5.03%. (Statcounter Global Stats)
Google's dominance leaves every other engine in single digits, with Bing, Yahoo, Yandex, and DuckDuckGo splitting the remainder.
Cloud, Hybrid, Edge & IoT Statistics
Where big data is stored and processed, and the database angle that matters most to the teams who run it.
Worldwide public cloud spending reached $723.4 billion in 2025. (Gartner)
Up from $595.7 billion in 2024, public cloud spending continues to grow at roughly 20% a year as more workloads leave on-premises hardware.
AWS holds 29% of the cloud infrastructure market, ahead of Azure (20%) and Google Cloud (13%). (Synergy Research Group)
Together the big three hold about 62% of cloud infrastructure services (and 67% of the narrower public-cloud segment), in a market running near $107 billion per quarter as of Q3 2025.
Three Companies Own Nearly Two-Thirds of the Cloud
03Cloud infrastructure market share, Q3 2025
64% of organizations run relational databases as a cloud service. (Flexera)
Managed relational database services are now mainstream, and 71% of organizations also run a cloud data warehouse, evidence that core data workloads have moved to the cloud.
Databases Have Moved to the Cloud
04Organizations running relational databases as a managed cloud service
Nearly every organization now uses generative AI in the cloud: 81% use it extensively or sparingly, and 45% use it extensively. (Flexera)
Generative AI is now among the most-used cloud services, and it is a major reason cloud data volumes (and bills) are climbing. For how this changes the work of database teams, see why AI won't replace your senior DBAs.
Organizations waste 29% of their cloud spend. (Flexera)
For the first time in five years the share of wasted cloud spend rose rather than fell, with respondents pointing to AI workloads as a major driver. Common drivers include over-provisioned databases and idle compute, plus unattached or over-tiered storage, oversized backup retention, and always-on dev and test environments.
About $122 Billion of Cloud Spend Is Wasted a Year
0529% of cloud infrastructure (IaaS + PaaS) spend
That 29% works out to roughly $122 billion of potentially avoidable IaaS and PaaS spend in a year. (Gartner) (Flexera)
Gartner puts worldwide IaaS and PaaS spending at about $420.5 billion in 2025; applying Flexera's 29% waste rate gives roughly $122 billion, much of it in over-sized database instances and idle compute. Right-sizing is how that money comes back, which is the work we do when we size cloud databases to avoid overspending.
73% of organizations now run a hybrid cloud. (Flexera)
Multicloud and hybrid setups are the norm rather than the exception, which raises the complexity of keeping data consistent and secure across environments. For database teams it means more places for data to live, and more places for cost and risk to hide.
The hybrid cloud market is worth $168.9 billion in 2025. (Mordor Intelligence)
Hybrid cloud pairs the scalability of public cloud with the control of private infrastructure, and the market is forecast to reach $347.8 billion by 2031.
The edge computing market is worth $33.4 billion in 2025. (Grand View Research)
Processing data closer to where it is created helps with latency and bandwidth, and the market is forecast to reach $328.0 billion by 2033, a 32.1% compound annual growth rate from 2026.
There are 21.1 billion connected IoT devices in 2025. (IoT Analytics)
Up from 18.5 billion in 2024, connected devices are a fast-growing source of machine-generated big data. Much of that data is created and processed at the edge, never touching a central data center, which is reshaping where storage and compute need to sit.
Software-as-a-service is the largest public-cloud segment, at $299 billion in 2025. (Gartner)
Within Gartner's $723.4 billion total, SaaS outweighs both infrastructure and platform services. Every SaaS tool is also a data silo, which is why integration and warehousing keep growing right alongside it.
Cloud infrastructure services revenue hit $106.9 billion in the third quarter of 2025. (Synergy Research Group)
That is roughly $390 billion over the trailing twelve months, up about 30% year over year, as AI workloads pull spending forward.
76% of large enterprises spend more than $5 million a month on public cloud. (Flexera)
Cloud has become a board-level cost line, not a rounding error, for most big organizations. At that scale even a few points of waste translate into millions a year, which is why FinOps has become its own discipline.
71% of organizations run a cloud data warehouse. (Flexera)
Cloud data warehouses are now standard infrastructure for analytics, sitting alongside the 64% that run relational databases as a service. Together they show that the core of the data stack, not just the edges, now lives in the cloud.
Worldwide sovereign-cloud infrastructure spending is forecast to reach $80 billion in 2026. (Gartner)
That is a 35.6% jump from 2025, driven by data-residency rules and regulated workloads. Governments and regulated industries increasingly require data to stay within national borders, and the big providers are racing to offer compliant regions.
Spending on AI-optimized infrastructure-as-a-service is set to roughly double to $37.5 billion in 2026. (Gartner)
Up from $18.3 billion in 2025, this is the fastest-growing slice of cloud infrastructure. Demand for GPUs and accelerators to train and run models is outpacing every other category of cloud spend.
Connected IoT devices are forecast to reach 39 billion by 2030. (IoT Analytics)
Up from 21.1 billion in 2025, each device adds to the machine-generated share of the world's data. That growth is a big reason edge computing and time-series storage are expanding so quickly.
Key Takeaways
- The big data market is large and still compounding: about $394.7 billion in 2025, heading toward $1.18 trillion by 2034.
- The constraint is shifting from storing data to paying for it: roughly $122 billion of cloud infrastructure spend is wasted in a year, much of it in over-sized databases.
- Core data workloads have moved to the cloud: 64% of organizations run relational databases as a managed service and 71% run a cloud data warehouse.
- AI is the new cost driver: $318 billion in AI infrastructure spend in 2025, and it is why cloud waste rose for the first time in five years.
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References
25 sources — every stat above links here
- 1. Fortune Business Insights — Big Data Analytics Market Report (Jun 2026) fortunebusinessinsights.com ↗
- 2. Statista — Volume of Data Created, Captured, Copied and Consumed Worldwide statista.com ↗
- 3. Gartner — Forecast: Worldwide Public Cloud End-User Spending to Total $723 Billion in 2025 (Nov 2024) gartner.com ↗
- 4. Flexera — 2026 State of the Cloud Report flexera.com ↗
- 5. Flexera — 2026 State of the Cloud Report: Cloud Value Is Rising While AI Waste Grows (press release, Mar 2026) flexera.com ↗
- 6. DataReportal — Digital 2026 Mid-Year Global Update Report (We Are Social / Meltwater) datareportal.com ↗
- 7. IDC — Worldwide AI Infrastructure Spending (press release, Apr 2026) idc.com ↗
- 8. Wavestone — 2025 AI & Data Leadership Executive Benchmark Survey dataiq.global ↗
- 9. Cloudscene — United States Data Center Market Overview cloudscene.com ↗
- 10. MarketsandMarkets — Data Center Colocation Market (press release, Jun 2025) marketsandmarkets.com ↗
- 11. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Outlook Handbook: Data Scientists bls.gov ↗
- 12. MarketsandMarkets — Data Center Colocation Market Report, 2025-2030 marketsandmarkets.com ↗
- 13. IMARC Group — Healthcare Big Data Analytics Market Report imarcgroup.com ↗
- 14. Market Research Future — Supply Chain Big Data Analytics Market Report marketresearchfuture.com ↗
- 15. Inside Big Data — Netflix Recommendations Save $1 Billion Per Year (2018) insidebigdata.com ↗
- 16. DataReportal — Digital 2025 Global Overview Report (We Are Social / Meltwater) datareportal.com ↗
- 17. Statcounter Global Stats — Search Engine Market Share Worldwide (May 2026) gs.statcounter.com ↗
- 18. IDC / Seagate — The Digitization of the World: Data Age 2025 (white paper, 2018) seagate.com ↗
- 19. Pew Research Center — How Americans View Data Privacy (Oct 2023) pewresearch.org ↗
- 20. Synergy Research Group — Cloud Market Growth Rate Rises Again in Q3 2025 srgresearch.com ↗
- 21. Mordor Intelligence — Hybrid Cloud Market Report (2026-2031) mordorintelligence.com ↗
- 22. Grand View Research — Edge Computing Market Size & Share Report (2026-2033) grandviewresearch.com ↗
- 23. IoT Analytics — State of IoT 2025: Number of Connected IoT Devices iot-analytics.com ↗
- 24. Gartner — Worldwide Sovereign Cloud IaaS Spending to Total $80 Billion in 2026 (press release, Feb 2026) gartner.com ↗
- 25. Gartner — AI-Optimized IaaS Is Poised to Become the Next Growth Engine (press release, Oct 2025) gartner.com ↗
