Microsoft has announced to invest $80 million this fiscal year (ending in June 2025) building data centres designed to handle AI workloads. In the company’s blog post, the tech giant plans to build these data centres to train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications around the world. More than half of this amount will be spent in the US, stated Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith.
Microsoft’s data center investments will support both its own AI workloads and those of customers using the Azure cloud computing service to access graphics processing units built by Nvidia Corp. According to Smith, top-tier enterprises are rushing to spend billions of dollars on those resources, in order to train and run their AI models.
During the first quarter of fiscal 2025, Microsoft reported around $20 billion in capital expenditures and assets acquired under finance leases globally, with $14.9 billion of that amount being spent on property and equipment. In October, the company’s chief financial officer Amy Hood said this spending will increase sequentially in the second quarter.
Data centre with AI supercomputer
Microsoft and OpenAI were reportedly in talks in April 2024 to build a data centre with an AI supercomputer dubbed Stargate. It was estimated to cost over $100 billion to build. Later in the year, Microsoft called the startup a “competitor” in an SEC filing. However, invested over $13 billion in OpenAI and has AI models, which are incorporated into products such as Windows and Teams, along with models from OpenAI and other AI firms.
In his blog post, Smith called on incoming President Donald Trump to protect the U.S.’s leadership in AI by investing in education and helping to promote the use of American AI technologies globally. Smith also cautioned the incoming Trump administration against “heavy-handed regulations” related to AI. “The most important US public-policy priority should be to ensure that the US private sector can continue to advance with the wind at its back,” Smith wrote.
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