[Digital Today reporter Jinju Hong (홍진주)] The spread of artificial intelligence is acting as a new growth driver across the enterprise hardware market. As companies and cloud operators race to build AI infrastructure, sales of servers, PCs and memory semiconductors are rising at the same time, in a sign that the impact of AI investment is being reflected in the physical market in earnest, an analysis says.

SiliconANGLE said on May 29 (local time) that the hardware industry is benefiting broadly as competition among companies to secure AI computing resources intensifies. It added that investor expectations are also rising as growing demand for AI servers leads to improved results at major IT companies.

Dell Technologies drew the most attention. Dell announced that revenue in its latest quarter rose 88 percent from a year earlier on the back of expanded AI server sales. The market strongly reflected the news, pushing up its share price.

Investor attention focused on the growth rate, which is rare among large IT companies. The industry interprets it as a sign that demand for AI infrastructure is moving beyond expectations and translating into actual revenue growth.

The AI boost is not limited to Dell. Data storage company NetApp is also benefiting from rising demand driven by an expansion of AI infrastructure, and HP is seeing expectations for improved results on recovering replacement demand for business PCs and expectations for the growth of the AI PC market.

The memory industry, in particular, is cited as a direct beneficiary of expanding investment in AI servers. AI servers require high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, to process large volumes of data quickly. As that demand surges, the enterprise value of Micron and SK hynix has also risen rapidly.

SiliconANGLE said the market capitalisation of the two companies has each exceeded $1 trillion amid expectations of rising memory demand for AI servers. That means the AI infrastructure race is lifting not only server makers but also key component suppliers.

Concerns raised in parts of the market that "AI will threaten the existing software industry" are proving more limited than expected. The industry has raised so-called "SaaSpocalypse" concerns that AI agents could replace software as a service, or SaaS. But major software companies are responding by rolling out strategies to use AI as a growth driver rather than a competitor.

A leading example is data platform company Snowflake. Snowflake announced it delivered solid results and signed a large-scale computing infrastructure purchase agreement with Amazon Web Services. Its shares surged 36 percent in after-hours trading. The market is assessing this as an example of Snowflake showing confidence that it can play a key role in data infrastructure in the AI era.

MongoDB, Salesforce and UiPath are also actively incorporating AI into product strategies to seek new growth opportunities. Some companies left investor concerns with conservative earnings guidance, but there is a mood that expectations are easing that the software industry as a whole will enter a sharp contraction because of AI.

Competition in the generative AI market is also intensifying. Anthropic succeeded this week in raising new funding worth $65 billion, lifting its valuation to $96.5 billion. It also unveiled its latest AI model, "Claude Opus 4.8," highlighting improved coding performance.

This is being assessed as a different trend from the existing market perception that the early lead built by OpenAI will not be easily shaken. Some in the industry also say Anthropic is emerging as a strong competitor in the generative AI market.

Concerns surrounding the AI industry are also growing. Pope Leo XIV raised concerns about the social impact of the spread of AI technology in his first encyclical released recently. He pointed to a lack of sufficient ethical and social discussion compared with the speed of technological development.

As the AI industry grows rapidly, debate is expected to expand further over the balance between technological innovation and social responsibility.

The industry's focus is now shifting to the next major technology events and corporate results. Snowflake Summit, Microsoft Build and Computex are scheduled soon, and earnings announcements are also expected from Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike and Broadcom.

The trend shows AI investment is entering a phase where it is not limited to expectations or software innovation, but is leading to actual growth in sales of servers, memory and data infrastructure. How much more AI computing demand can lift the enterprise hardware market's growth will be a key point to watch in the industry.