Microsoft The company plans to spend $80 billion in fiscal 2025 to construct data centers able to handling artificial intelligence workloads, the corporate said Friday Blog post.
More than half of expected spending on AI infrastructure will occur within the US, wrote Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad Smith. Microsoft's 2025 fiscal yr ends in June.
“Today, the United States leads the global AI race, thanks to the investment of private capital and innovation from American companies of all sizes, from dynamic startups to established companies,” said Smith. “At Microsoft, we’ve seen this firsthand through our partnership with OpenAI, emerging companies like Anthropic and xAI, and our own AI-powered software platforms and applications.”
Several top-tier tech corporations are rushing to spend billions Nvidia Graphics processing units for training and running AI models. The rapid spread of OpenAI's ChatGPT assistant, launched in late 2022, sparked the AI race for corporations to supply their very own generative AI capabilities. After investing greater than $13 billion in OpenAI, Microsoft is providing the startup with cloud infrastructure and has integrated its models into Windows, Teams and other products.
Microsoft reported $20 billion in capital expenditures and assets acquired under capital leases worldwide in the primary quarter of fiscal 2025, including $14.9 billion for property, plant and equipment. Capital spending will increase sequentially within the second fiscal quarter, Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said in October.
Analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha expected additions to property, plant and equipment of $63.2 billion for fiscal 2025, representing 42% year-over-year growth.
Microsoft's revenue from Azure and other cloud services rose 33% within the fiscal first quarter, with AI services accounting for 12 percentage points.
Smith called on the brand new administration of President-elect Donald Trump to guard the country's leadership in AI through education and the promotion of U.S. AI technologies abroad.
“China is beginning to offer developing countries subsidized access to scarce chips, and it is promising to build local AI data centers,” Smith wrote. “The Chinese are wisely aware that a country that standardizes China’s AI platform is likely to continue to rely on that platform in the future.”
He added: “The United States' best response is not to complain about the competition, but to ensure that we win the race before us. To do this, we must move quickly and effectively to promote American AI as a superior alternative.”
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