Microsoft is experiencing a significant surge in the demand for cloud AI services, outpacing the available supply despite a substantial increase in spending. The company’s chief financial officer, Amy Hood, revealed that Microsoft is ramping up its spending at a rate not seen since at least 2016, with capital expenditures soaring by 79% to $14 billion compared to the previous year. This spending acceleration is occurring even as revenue growth remains at 17% during the same period.
One of the core issues highlighted by Microsoft is a shortage in data center infrastructure specifically tailored for deploying artificial intelligence models. Amy Hood emphasized during the earnings call that the demand for compute power to handle complex workloads and integrate advanced AI features into products is surpassing their current supply capabilities. This surge in demand has been fueled by the proliferation of AI applications such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot, prompting Microsoft to integrate similar capabilities into its Teams communication app, Bing search engine, and various other services.
However, Microsoft is not alone in facing supply challenges in the AI hardware sector. Industry giant Nvidia, known for developing processors for generative AI models, has also been grappling with supply constraints as its revenue continues to triple in consecutive quarters. As a major customer of Nvidia, Microsoft is feeling the strain of these supply limitations, particularly in its Azure cloud services where AI plays a pivotal role.
During the third fiscal quarter, Microsoft witnessed a 31% growth in revenue from Azure cloud services, with AI accounting for 7 percentage points of this increase. The capacity constraints impacting Microsoft’s AI capabilities are likely to impact results in the upcoming quarter as well. Amy Hood pointed out that the supply crunch means Microsoft has limited capacity to offer clients for deploying AI models during the inference stage, thereby affecting their overall AI offerings.
Looking ahead, Microsoft is planning to substantially increase its capital expenditures, particularly in cloud infrastructure, to address the pressing demand for its cloud and AI products. Amy Hood emphasized the need for greater investments in the new fiscal year starting July 1 to scale up and meet the rising demands from its clients effectively.
