Artificial intelligence is changing where and how customers spend, creating substantive headwinds for some. Evidence of customer buying pattern changes tied to AI, new models, and data infrastructure in the last quarter of earnings calls, releases and conference calls.
| ticker | Company Name | Evidence of customer reprioritization / buying-pattern change tied to AI, new models, or data infrastructure | Source | Market Cap | Subsector |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBM | International Business Machines Corporation | One of the clearest explicit examples of customer capex reprioritization. IBM said clients in late June shifted quarterly capex toward servers, storage, and memory to secure supply-constrained infrastructure ahead of expected price increases, and IBM “did not anticipate the magnitude of the capex reprioritization.” It also said clients are making deliberate choices about where AI workloads run and who controls the underlying infrastructure. | Jul 14, 2026 Earnings Release, Apr 22, 2026 Earnings Call | $272.78B | Information Technology Services |
| CDW | CDW Corp. | Very direct evidence that AI reshaped customer budget priorities. CDW said customers “shifted their spend priorities”: cloud growth slowed as customers prioritized hardware investment; AI and supply constraints produced a heavier infrastructure hardware mix; and services, warranties, and software assurance became lower priorities. In financial services, customers focused on storage and server purchases to enable AI inferencing. | May 6, 2026 Earnings Call, May 19, 2026 Conference Call, May 6, 2026 Earnings Release | $18.44B | Information Technology Services |
| FFIV | F5, Inc. | Strong evidence of workload and infrastructure spending reallocation. F5 said customers are becoming more surgical about placing workloads where they run best economically, leading to workload repatriation, rebalancing of application portfolios, and reinvestment in private infrastructure/private data centers. It also said customers are recommitting to hardware and sometimes adding capacity outside normal refresh cycles as they upgrade for AI and AI-embedded applications. | Apr 28, 2026 Earnings Call, May 28, 2026 Conference Call | $23.75B | Software - Infrastructure |
| ANET | Arista Networks, Inc. | Clear evidence of spending moving within data-center budgets toward AI back-end infrastructure. Arista said some customers are putting a “big focus” on AI such that traditional data-center activity can slow, and management said customers may be “almost ignoring” front-end refreshes “in favor of the back end.” It also cited architecture/procurement changes during refresh cycles and new builds. | May 5, 2026 Earnings Call, Jun 3, 2026 Conference Call, May 14, 2026 Conference Call, Jun 2, 2026 Conference Call | $228.10B | Computer Hardware |
| EPAM | EPAM Systems, Inc. | Explicit statement that clients are shifting IT budgets toward AI spending and diverting investments away from digital platform and e-commerce platform build-outs toward AI-native products and AI-native platforms. Also said AI-native capabilities are opening the door to vendor consolidation and larger transformation deals. | May 7, 2026 Earnings Call | $4.51B | Information Technology Services |
| NOW | ServiceNow, Inc. | Strong evidence of both reallocation and new budget creation. ServiceNow said AI budgets are coming from historical IT budgets and also from new budget pools from C-suites/boards/CFOs, with “separate budgets coming.” It also said customers are reallocating technology spend, eliminating point solutions, and leaning into platform consolidation as they move from experimentation to full-scale deployment. | Apr 22, 2026 Earnings Call, Jun 3, 2026 Conference Call, Apr 22, 2026 Earnings Release, Jun 3, 2026 Conference Call | $114.74B | Software - Application |
