AI SOC market to reach $47 billion by 2031
The global AI Security Operations Center market is projected to more than double over the next five years as organizations turn to artificial intelligence to manage increasingly complex cyber threats and security environments.
According to a new MarketsandMarkets report, the AI Security Operations Center (SOC) market is expected to grow from USD 18.10 billion in 2026 to USD 47.07 billion by 2031, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.1 percent.
Growth is being driven by rising AI-powered cyber threats, increasing alert volumes, cybersecurity skills shortages, and wider adoption of cloud, hybrid, and identity-centric infrastructure. AI SOC platforms are increasingly being used to combine security data from multiple environments, automate investigations, prioritize threats, and accelerate incident response.
Continuous monitoring drives demand
Threat detection and monitoring is expected to dominate the application segment as organizations seek continuous visibility across distributed IT environments. Behavioral analytics, automated risk assessment, and threat correlation can help security teams identify suspicious activity earlier while reducing alert fatigue. Incident investigation and analysis is forecast to be the fastest-growing application, with a CAGR of 18.8 percent during the forecast period.
Small and medium-sized enterprises are projected to be the fastest-growing organization segment, with MarketsandMarkets forecasting a CAGR of 19.7 percent. Cloud-delivered platforms and managed AI security services are making advanced SOC capabilities more accessible to organizations with limited internal cybersecurity resources.
AI SOC market at a glance
$18.10 billion — projected market size in 2026
$47.07 billion — projected market size by 2031
21.1% — CAGR from 2026 to 2031
41.5% — North America’s market share in 2026
19.7% — projected CAGR for the SME segment
18.6% — projected CAGR for energy and utilities
Software platforms are expected to dominate the market in 2026, while AI-enabled detection and analytics platforms are projected to account for the largest software segment during the forecast period. Within services, AI-augmented managed detection and response (MDR) is expected to hold the largest market size.
Trust remains a barrier to autonomous SOCs
Despite rapid adoption, limited trust in autonomous AI decision-making remains a restraint on the market. MarketsandMarkets points to concerns over false positives, incorrect recommendations, limited explainability, and potential business disruption, meaning human oversight is likely to remain important for high-impact security decisions.
North America accounted for the largest share of the AI SOC market in 2026 at 41.5 percent, while Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest-growing region during the forecast period. Energy and utilities is forecast to record the highest growth rate among industry verticals, at a CAGR of 18.6 percent, while BFSI is expected to remain the largest vertical market.
The AI SOC market is moving from analyst-driven security operations toward increasingly autonomous, AI-native platforms.
Key players
Microsoft, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Google, Sophos, IBM, Fortinet, Arctic Wolf, Elastic, Rapid7, SentinelOne and Lumu Technologies are among the key companies identified in the MarketsandMarkets AI SOC market report.
