Big Data Statistics 2026: Data Growth, Spending, Platforms and Jobs

The global datasphere is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 27% through 2030, reaching around 718 zettabytes annually, according to International Data Corporation (IDC) figures cited in Seagate Technology’s annual report. Hard disk drive (HDD) shipments show the same pull: Seagate shipped 789 HDD exabytes in fiscal year 2026, up from 595 in fiscal year 2025. The big data statistics below cover data volume, infrastructure spending, power use, the platforms that store and analyze data, business adoption and the jobs market.

Spending and hiring are projected to rise with the data. Gartner forecasts data center systems spending of $822 billion in 2026, up from $506 billion in 2025, a rise of 62.5%, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects employment of data scientists to grow 35% from 2025 to 2035. Every figure comes from a company filing or press release, a government data set, an energy agency report, an employer survey or a named forecast.

Key Takeaways

• Nearline hard drives made up 695 of Seagate’s 789 HDD exabytes shipped in fiscal year 2026, up from 497 in fiscal year 2025.
• Data centers accounted for around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024, or 415 terawatt-hours (TWh), according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
• Palantir’s US commercial revenue grew 149% year-over-year to $764 million in Q2 2026.
• MongoDB customers with $100,000 or greater in annualized recurring revenue (ARR) rose from 2,189 to 2,999 between July 31, 2024 and July 31, 2026.
• 37% of firms with at least 250 employees reported using AI in their business operations, according to the US Census Bureau.
• Overall employment of database administrators and architects is projected to grow 4% from 2025 to 2035, far behind data scientists.

Editor’s Choice

• Global datasphere by 2030, IDC forecast: around 718 zettabytes annually.
• Worldwide IT spending in 2026, Gartner forecast: $6.37 trillion, up 14.2% from 2025.
• Amazon Web Services (AWS) segment sales in Q2 2026: $42.2 billion.
• Databricks revenue run-rate, August 2026: crossed $7 billion.
• Snowflake product revenue, quarter ended July 31, 2026: $1.49 billion.
• Data scientist median annual wage, May 2025: $120,230.

Big Data Statistics on Data Volume and Storage

• AI-enhanced applications are further accelerating data creation, according to Seagate’s fiscal 2026 annual report, which also expects longer data retention, greater data replication and evolving regulatory requirements to support demand for mass-capacity storage.
• In IDC’s forecast, as cited by Seagate, the global datasphere is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of approximately 27% through 2030, reaching around 718 zettabytes annually.
• Seagate’s total HDD exabyte shipments grew 32.6% from fiscal year 2025 to fiscal year 2026.
• Data Center revenue made up 80% of Seagate’s revenue in fiscal year 2026, up from 75% the year before.
• Revenue in fiscal year 2026 increased approximately 34%, or $3.1 billion, from fiscal year 2025, primarily due to an increase in nearline exabytes shipped.

Source: Seagate Technology Form 10-K, fiscal year 2026

About This Data

• Compiled from 12 sources: 6 company filings, earnings releases and press releases, 3 US government publications, 1 intergovernmental energy report, 1 research firm forecast and 1 international organization survey.
• The sources were published between January 2025 and September 2026; forecasts, company-reported results and survey data are labeled as such.
• Only primary releases qualified, and the page is reviewed on a rolling basis as sources publish new editions.

Big Data Infrastructure Spending Statistics

• Worldwide IT spending is expected to reach $6.37 trillion in 2026, up 14.2% from 2025, according to Gartner’s July 2026 forecast.
• Data center systems spending rises from $506 billion in 2025 to $822 billion in 2026, per the same forecast.
• Data center systems account for 12.9% of forecast 2026 IT spending, up from 9.1% in 2025.
• Software spending reaches $1,468 billion in 2026, from $1,271 billion in 2025, an increase of 15.5%.
• John-David Lovelock, Distinguished VP Analyst at Gartner, said: “Building the compute capacity required for AI is the largest infrastructure project ever attempted by humanity.”

Recent Developments

• September 2, 2026: Snowflake reported product revenue of $1.49 billion in the second quarter, representing 37% year-over-year growth, for the quarter ended July 31, 2026.
• September 1, 2026: MongoDB reported second quarter fiscal 2027 total revenue of $771.8 million, up 30% year-over-year.
• August 13, 2026: Databricks closed a $5 billion strategic funding round at a $190 billion valuation.
• July 27, 2026: Gartner named data center systems and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) the top growth segments, with infrastructure as a service at $287 billion in 2026.
• Q2 2026: Palantir revenue grew 93% year-over-year and 19% quarter-over-quarter to $1.935 billion.
• Q2 2026: Amazon reported AWS segment operating income was $16.6 billion for the quarter.

Data Center Electricity Use Statistics

• Data centers accounted for around 1.5% of the world’s electricity consumption in 2024, or 415 TWh, per the IEA’s Energy and AI report.
• Globally, data center electricity consumption has grown by around 12% per year since 2017, more than four times faster than the rate of total electricity consumption.
• Global investment in data centers has nearly doubled since 2022, according to the IEA.
• Data center electricity consumption is set to more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030, slightly more than Japan’s total electricity consumption today.
• The United States accounted for the largest share of global data center electricity consumption in 2024 (45%), followed by China (25%) and Europe (15%).
• In the United States, data centers account for nearly half of electricity demand growth between now and 2030.

Further out, the IEA Base Case sees global data center electricity consumption rising to around 1,200 TWh by 2035. The IEA describes uncertainty widening after 2030, so the 2035 figure is the least firm of the three.

Why it matters: AI is the most important driver of this growth, alongside growing demand for other digital services, according to the IEA. For anyone running big data workloads, that turns electricity supply into a planning constraint alongside storage hardware, because the same data centers host analytics, cloud storage and AI training.

Cloud Infrastructure Statistics for Big Data

• In Amazon’s second-quarter results, AWS segment sales increased 37% year-over-year to $42.2 billion.
• AWS made up 21.0% of Amazon’s second-quarter net sales, and Amazon’s net sales increased 20% in the second quarter, compared with $167.7 billion in second quarter 2025.
• Gartner’s forecast for cloud infrastructure spending puts infrastructure as a service at $222 billion in 2025 and $287 billion in 2026, growth of 29.3%.

Source: Amazon.com second quarter 2026 results

Snowflake Data Cloud Statistics

• Snowflake, which describes itself as the AI Data Cloud company, reported product revenue of $1.49 billion in the second quarter, representing 37% year-over-year growth.
• Product revenue made up 96.1% of Snowflake’s $1.55 billion total revenue in the quarter.
• Snowflake reported a net revenue retention rate of 126%. A rate above 100 means existing customers, as a group, spent more than a year earlier.
• Snowflake had 828 customers with trailing 12-month product revenue greater than $1 million, representing 27% year-over-year growth.

Source: Snowflake second quarter fiscal 2027 results, September 2026

Databricks Lakehouse Statistics

• Databricks, the Data and AI company, crossed a $7 billion revenue run-rate, delivering more than 80% year-over-year growth during its Q2.
• Lakehouse, its data warehousing product, surpassed a $1.5 billion revenue run-rate, growing over 100% year over year.
• Databricks said it is continuing to deliver positive adjusted free cash flow over the past 12 months.

Source: Databricks, August 2026

Databricks reports a run-rate, an annualized figure, while Snowflake reports quarterly revenue, so the two numbers are not directly comparable.

MongoDB Database Statistics

• MongoDB reported second quarter fiscal 2027 total revenue of $771.8 million, up 30% year-over-year, with Atlas revenue up approximately 29% year-over-year.
• MongoDB counted 70,600+ total customers, up from 50,700+ two years earlier (July 31, 2026 versus July 31, 2024).
• MongoDB Atlas customers reached 69,300+ in the same quarter.
• Customers with $100,000 or more in annualized recurring revenue reached 2,999 in the latest quarter, a gain of 37.0% over two years.
• MongoDB’s customer count excludes users of its free offerings, so the counts cover paying accounts.

Palantir Big Data Analytics Statistics

• US commercial revenue grew 149% year-over-year and 28% quarter-over-quarter to $764 million in Q2 2026.
• US government revenue grew to $809 million, and US revenue reached $1.573 billion.
• Palantir closed total contract value of $3.373 billion, up 49% year-over-year.
• It closed 220 deals of at least $1 million, 98 deals of at least $5 million, and 73 deals of at least $10 million.

By the numbers: Palantir reported US commercial remaining deal value of $6.238 billion, up 124% year-over-year, after it closed a record-setting $2.132 billion of US commercial total contract value, up 153% year-over-year. Palantir’s US commercial book is now growing faster than its government work, a shift in where analytics software demand comes from.

Business AI Adoption Statistics

• Among US businesses, AI adoption rises with firm size: 37% of firms with at least 250 employees reported using AI in their business operations.
• Less than 20% of firms with four or fewer employees reported using AI.
• The AI use rates in the Information (39.7%) and Finance and Insurance (33.9%) sectors were both higher than the national rate as of May 3, 2026.
• About 42% of businesses in the Information sector and roughly 39% in Finance and Insurance expected to use AI in their business functions over the next six months.
• Businesses in the Retail Trade sector reported current and expected usage lower than the national average: around 14% of businesses currently use AI.

Big Data Salary Statistics

• The median annual wage for data scientists was $120,230 in May 2025.
• The lowest 10% earned less than $67,240, and the highest 10% earned more than $199,130.
• Publishing, broadcasting, and content providers paid data scientists a median $142,240 in May 2025.
• Among the top industries the BLS lists, insurance carriers and related activities paid a median $108,650.

Database roles sit on either side of the data scientist median. The median annual wage for database architects was $139,500 in May 2025, and the median annual wage for database administrators was $104,620.

What is a big data analytics salary?

Data scientists are the closest BLS occupation to a big data analyst role, so they serve as the measure here. The median annual wage for data scientists was $120,230 in May 2025, with database architects paid more and database administrators paid less, as the occupation chart above shows.

Big Data Job Growth Statistics

• Employment of data scientists is projected to grow 35% from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all occupations.
• About 24,800 openings for data scientists are projected each year, on average, over the decade.
• Data scientists held about 275,600 jobs in 2025, with publishing, broadcasting, and content providers employing 12%.
• About 7,300 openings for database administrators and architects are projected each year, whose overall employment is projected to grow 4% from 2025 to 2035.
• Demand for machine learning skills shows up in the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs survey of executives: the three fastest-growing jobs in percentage terms are big data specialists, fintech engineers and AI and machine learning specialists.

Key finding: The World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report 2025 surveyed more than 1,000 companies around the world, representing 22 industry clusters and more than 14 million workers, and 86% of respondents expected AI and information processing technologies to transform their business by 2030.

Is big data a good career?

Employment of data scientists is projected to grow 35% from 2025 to 2035, with about 24,800 openings projected each year, and the World Economic Forum lists big data specialists among the three fastest-growing jobs in percentage terms. Those projections favor analysis roles over database administration, though they describe demand, not any one person’s prospects.

Conclusion

The global datasphere is expected to grow at approximately 27% a year through 2030, reaching around 718 zettabytes annually, and the money and power behind it are projected to rise too: Gartner forecasts data center systems spending of $822 billion this year, and the IEA projects around 945 TWh of data center electricity by 2030. Company results from AWS, Snowflake, Databricks, MongoDB and Palantir show that demand is landing on the platforms that store, query and model that data.

For readers weighing a career, the clearest signal is the gap between roles: employment of data scientists is projected to grow 35% from 2025 to 2035, against 4% for database administrators and architects. The next Gartner forecast and the next round of quarterly results will show whether spending keeps pace with that growth.