data centers

Microsoft’s engineering teams and a growing stable of partners have quietly moved from exploratory lab tests to concrete pilots that could fundamentally change how hyperscale computing is powered: instead of thicker copper and heavier busbars, entire power distribution trunks inside and around...

Microsoft's Azure team says it will rethink how power gets to the rack, proposing a wholesale redesign of datacenter power distribution that replaces bulky copper and aluminium conductors with high‑temperature superconductors (HTS). The company frames the move as a pragmatic engineering pivot to...

Microsoft's recent public push on high-temperature superconductors (HTS) for datacenter power delivery is a striking mix of promise and prudence: the company is signaling serious interest in a technology that could radically increase power density and reduce transmission losses, while...

Microsoft’s recent public foray into high‑temperature superconductors (HTS) for datacenter power delivery represents more than a laboratory novelty — it is a deliberate engineering bet that the next generation of cloud-scale compute will require fundamentally different approaches to electricity...

Big Tech is treating 2026 like a construction season for a new industrial economy: together, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta are committing roughly US$650 billion toward AI-related capital expenditures this year — an unprecedented, front‑loaded bet on data centres, specialised chips...

The shockwaves from the AI boom just produced one of Asia’s largest digital‑infrastructure moves: a KKR‑led consortium, joined by Singtel, has agreed to buy the remaining 82% stake in ST Telemedia Global Data Centres (STT GDC) from ST Telemedia for S$6.6 billion — an acquisition that pegs STT...

The hyperscalers are no longer hedging their bets: they are front‑loading an industrial‑scale build‑out of data centers, power infrastructure, and GPU fleets that will define where AI runs, who pays for it, and how enterprises consume it for the next decade. Amazon’s recent pledge to invest...

Data centers are no longer just voracious consumers of electricity; a rising number of operators are redesigning facilities, contracts and controls so those same data centers can become active partners in balancing and stabilizing power systems at scale. This shift—what the industry increasingly...

Microsoft’s December quarter left little doubt about one thing: Azure’s future is deeply entangled with OpenAI today, and that entanglement is reshaping Microsoft’s capital plan, product strategy, and investor narrative. The company reported $81.3 billion in revenue for Q2 FY26, a 17 percent...

Both Meta and Microsoft are answering the same skeptical question from investors and communities: why double down on sprawling, power-hungry AI data centers right now — and do the numbers add up...

Microsoft’s latest quarter delivered a clear and consequential message: the company is racing to turn AI demand into raw infrastructure at scale — and it’s paying for it now. Overview Microsoft reported fiscal Q2 2026 revenue of $81.3 billion, with Microsoft Cloud topping $50 billion for the...

Microsoft’s push to plant 15 more datacenter campuses in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, underscores a sobering paradox at the heart of the AI boom: hyperscalers promise local economic benefits and technological leadership while quietly reshaping the environmental and infrastructure footprints of...

Cloud hyperscalers are escalating an AI-driven infrastructure race that will push capital expenditures into the high hundreds of billions in 2026, reshaping data center design, energy markets, vendor ecosystems and enterprise IT procurement in the process. Background Hyperscale cloud providers —...

Microsoft’s latest public push to expand AI-ready datacenters comes with an explicit promise: the company says it will “pay its own way” so local household electricity bills do not rise as a result of its buildouts, and it pairs that pledge with targets on water, jobs, taxes and community...

Microsoft’s new “Community‑First AI Infrastructure” pledge lands as a strategic pivot in the company’s datacenter strategy, a public-facing bid to reframe hyperscale AI buildouts as accountable, locally beneficial investments rather than hidden local burdens. Background Microsoft launched the...

The Illinois attorney general has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to pause and scrutinize proposed Transmission Service Agreements (TSAs) between Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) and multiple data center developers, arguing the contracts fail to insulate existing ratepayers from...

Microsoft’s newest public commitment — a pledge to ensure its AI datacenters do not drive up local electricity bills — marks a turning point in how hyperscale cloud providers are answering political, regulatory, and community pressure over the environmental and economic footprint of AI...

Microsoft’s latest AI diffusion snapshot reframes a familiar narrative: Africa is not a single market but a collection of fast-moving, unevenly resourced digital economies—and a small number of countries are already pulling ahead on AI adoption, skills and governance while the rest face...

The calendar year 2025 will be read in hindsight as the year artificial intelligence stopped being an experiment and became an industrial force — reshaping markets, national policy, energy systems, corporate headcounts, and intimate human relationships in ways few expected and many are still...

Silicon Valley’s biggest startups closed 2025 with an unprecedented haul of private capital — roughly $150 billion — as investors poured record sums into AI-first companies and a handful of megadeals dominated the year’s totals. That flood of money reshaped late‑stage venture math, empowered...