Microsoft Refutes Reports of AI Infrastructure Pullback

Microsoft reportedly still plans to earmark $80 billion for capital expenditures, despite reports suggesting otherwise.

As CNBC reported Monday (Feb. 24), the tech giant says its spending plan is still on track, while adding that it “may strategically pace or adjust our infrastructure in some areas.”

This came after analysts at TD Cowen issued a report, citing “channel checks,” which suggested that Microsoft had canceled leases with “at least two private data center operators,” CNBC said.

Microsoft had announced at the start of the year that it planned to spend upwards of $80 billion during this fiscal year — which ends in June — on data centers that were capable of handling artificial intelligence (AI) projects.

“Our plans to spend over $80 billion on infrastructure this FY remains on track as we continue to grow at a record pace to meet customer demand,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC.

The CNBC report notes that aside from building data centers for its own use and for customers to access via the Azure public cloud, Microsoft leases data center capacity through providers such as CoreWeave. The company is also a key backer for OpenAI, which is part of the recently-announced $500 billion Stargate data center project with Oracle and SoftBank.

“Thanks to the significant investments we have made up to this point, we are well positioned to meet our current and increasing customer demand,” Microsoft’s spokesperson said.

“Last year alone, we added more capacity than any prior year in history. While we may strategically pace or adjust our infrastructure in some areas, we will continue to grow strongly in all regions. This allows us to invest and allocate resources to growth areas for our future.”

In other recent Microsoft news, the tech giant announced last week that it had created the world’s first “topoconductor,” which is a new type of matter — not solid, liquid or gas — that had only until now existed in theory. The topoconductor makes the core of Majorana 1, Microsoft’s new quantum chip.

“We believe this breakthrough will allow us to create a truly meaningful quantum computer not in decades, as some have predicted, but in years,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella wrote in a post on LinkedIn.

As PYMNTS noted, while quantum computing has been in development for decades, “its exponentially greater computing power has not found practical use due to instability, errors and cost. It also needs to scale to be useful.”