Microsoft announced Friday it plans to invest roughly $80 billion this fiscal year on data centers, highlighting the influence of large technology companies over artificial intelligence and the electricity mix.
Data centers could triple their energy use and account for as much as 12 percent of U.S. electricity consumption by 2028, according to a report last month from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. While Microsoft did not detail how it intends to fully spend the funds, the company’s size suggests its data center buildout could affect renewable and other electricity projects across the country.
The $80 billion is slated to “build out AI-enabled datacenters to train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications around the world. More than half of this total investment will be in the United States, reflecting our commitment to this country and our confidence in the American economy,” wrote Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, in a blog post. Fiscal 2025 runs through the end of June.
Smith said a 2019 executive order on AI during the first term of President Donald Trump “rightly focused” on research and making federal data more accessible. The incoming administration should expand on those efforts by backing more research funding at the National Science Foundation and universities, he said.
