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Vice Chair and President at Microsoft, Brad Smith, participates in the first day of Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, November 12, 2024. The largest technology conference in the world this year has 71,528 attendees from 153 countries and 3,050 companies, with AI. emerging as the most represented industry. (Photo by Rita Franca/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Nurfoto | Nurfoto | Getty Images
Microsoft plans to spend $80 billion in fiscal 2025 building data centers that can handle artificial intelligence workloads, the company said in a blog post Friday.
More than half of the planned spending on AI infrastructure will take place in the United States, Microsoft vice president and president Brad Smith wrote. Microsoft’s 2025 fiscal year ends in June.
“Today, the United States is leading the global AI race thanks to private capital investment and innovation from American companies of all sizes, from dynamic start-ups to well-established enterprises,” Smith said. “At Microsoft, we’ve seen this firsthand through our partnership with OpenAI, from growing companies like Anthropic and xAI, and our AI-enabled software platforms and applications.”
Many top-tier tech companies are rushing to spend billions Nvidia graphics processing units for training and running AI models. The rapid spread of OpenAI’s ChatGPT assistant, which was launched at the end of 2022, started the AI race for companies to provide their AI generative capabilities. After investing more than $13 billion in OpenAI, Microsoft provides cloud infrastructure at the start and has incorporated the start-up models into Windows, Teams and other products.
Microsoft reported $20 billion in capital expenditures and assets acquired under finance leases worldwide, with $14.9 billion spent on property and equipment, in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025. Capital expenditures will increase in sequence in the second fiscal quarter, Amy Hood, Chief Financial Officer of Microsoft, said. in October.
Smith called on the incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump to protect the country’s leadership in AI through education and promotion of US AI technologies abroad.
“China is starting to offer developing countries subsidized access to scarce chips, and promises to build local AI data centers,” Smith wrote. “The Chinese wisely recognize that if a country standardizes on China’s AI platform, it will likely continue to rely on that platform in the future.
“The best response for the United States is not to complain about the competition, but to ensure that we win the race ahead. This will require us to move quickly and effectively to promote American AI as a superior alternative.”
WATCH: Microsoft will end 2024 with capital expenditures of at least $53 billion
