Microsoft has unveiled a US$23 billion (A$34.65 billion) investment in AI, with the bulk of it going towards India.
CEO Sataya Nadella said the tech giant would spend US$17.5 billion in India, adding to its previous US$3 billion commitment announced earlier this year.
The four-year spending plan starts in 2026 and would give Microsoft the largest cloud-computing presence in India.
This is Microsoft's largest investment in Asia.
In a post to X, Nadella said the investment would “help build the infrastructure, skills, and sovereign capabilities needed for India’s AI-first future”.
This is part of Microsoft’s attempt to strengthen its place in the AI market, as data centres in South Asia are seen as the U.S. tech giants’ best bet to break the boom.
The Microsoft investment follows Google's US$15 billion investment over five years to build an AI data centre in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, in its biggest commitment to India.
Microsoft has also announced that it would invest more than C$7.5 billion (US$5.42 billion) in Canada over the next two years.
This would be part of its total C$19 billion between 2023 and 2027 for Canada.
It would help the company expand its Azure Local cloud offering in Canada.
Microsoft is also partnering with Canadian AI startup Cohere to offer the firm’s advanced AI models on the Azure platform.
Microsoft, alongside other U.S. cloud providers, are expected to spend more than US$400 billion on AI this year to build out data centres needed to support services such as ChatGPT, Copilot and Gemini.
