Microsoft has recently declared that it will invest over 80 billion dollars within the current fiscal year to build data centers aimed at supporting AI workloads. This move is intended to strengthen its leading position in the rapidly growing artificial intelligence sector.
The plan was disclosed on Friday in a blog post. Brad Smith, Microsoft's Chairman and Vice President, stated that more than half of the funds would be allocated to data center construction in the United States. Given that Microsoft's fiscal year ends in June, the investment plans are already underway.
Smith highlighted that thanks to private capital investments and innovations from American enterprises ranging from established companies to emerging startups, the US currently leads in the global AI competition. Through partnerships with OpenAI and collaborations with emerging firms like Anthropic and xAI, as well as the development of its own AI software platforms and applications, Microsoft has firsthand experience of this advantage.
Microsoft's data center investments will support both its own AI workloads and customers using Nvidia GPUs through Azure cloud services. According to Smith, top-tier companies are competing fiercely by investing billions of dollars into these resources to train and run their AI models.
The launch of OpenAI's popular chatbot ChatGPT has sparked an AI race, with nearly every major company eager to develop its own generative AI applications. Leading in this field, Microsoft has not only invested over 13 billion dollars in OpenAI but also developed its own AI models integrated into products such as Windows and Teams, along with models from OpenAI and other AI companies.
In Q1 of the 2025 fiscal year, Microsoft's capital expenditures and assets acquired via finance leases globally amounted to approximately 20 billion dollars, with 14.9 billion dollars dedicated to property and equipment. In October, the company's CFO Amy Hood indicated that this expenditure would increase in the second quarter.
According to analysts surveyed by Visible Alpha that month, Microsoft's spending on property and equipment for the 2025 fiscal year is expected to reach around 63.2 billion dollars, representing a 42% increase compared to the previous year.
Whether Microsoft can recoup such substantial investments remains to be seen, but its AI-related revenue is experiencing rapid growth. In Q1, Azure and other cloud service revenues grew by 33%, with 12% attributed to AI services.
In his blog post, Smith urged the incoming US President Donald Trump to protect America's leadership in AI by investing in education and promoting the global adoption of American AI technologies. He mentioned that China has started offering chip subsidies to developing countries and pledged to establish local AI data centers. "China wisely recognizes that if a country adopts China's AI platform, it may continue to rely on it in the future," Smith noted.
He believes that the best way to address this challenge is not to complain but to take action to ensure that American AI becomes the superior choice.
