Here's a summary of the key points from the Fierce Network article, "No, Microsoft isn't abandoning its data center growth plan" (May 1, 2025):
- Recent media reports suggested Microsoft was slowing or pausing its data center projects.
- Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella clarified during the company's fiscal Q3 earnings call that the apparent shifts in policy are part of their ongoing strategy—not a retreat.
- Microsoft opened data centers in 10 countries across four continents in the most recent quarter.
- Nadella emphasized optimizing data center locations and responding to changing demand and workload types: “You don’t want to be upside-down on having one big data center in one region when you have a global demand footprint ... when the shape of demand changes.”
- CFO Amy Hood stated Microsoft is actually accelerating the delivery of new capacity in some areas, not cutting back. However, due to high demand for cloud and AI services, Microsoft expects compute capacity to remain “a little short, ... a little tight” as the year closes, indicating continued strong demand.
- Key financials from Microsoft’s fiscal Q3 2025:
- Revenue up 13% to $70.1 billion.
- Overall cloud revenue up 20% to $42.4 billion.
- Intelligent Cloud revenue up 21% to $26.8 billion.
- Azure/cloud services revenue up 33%.
- Profit rose 18% to $25.8 billion.
- Commercial bookings backlog grew 34% to $315 billion.
- Capex slightly lower than expected at $21.4 billion.
- Conclusion: Microsoft is not scaling back its expansion. Any changes in project timing or location are strategic adjustments to meet global demand and efficient resource allocation.
Source: Fierce Network No, Microsoft isn't abandoning its data center growth plan
