Microsoft Corp. is planning to spend more than $7.9 billion on data centers, cloud computing and employees in the United Arab Emirates over the next four years, capitalizing on a US government clearance to ship artificial intelligence chips to the Gulf nation.

Microsoft's recent cloud-computing performance reflects that the company has been picking up market share at the expense of hyperscale rivals, according to Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Thomas Blakey. That's mainly driven by the company's artificial-intelligence advantages,

Microsoft signed a $9.7 billion deal with IREN for Nvidia chips and data centre capacity, and expanded its Lambda partnership.

The five-year deal, valued at roughly $9.7 billion, includes a 20% prepayment and marks a significant step in IREN’s expansion into large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The company has also signed a $5.8 billion procurement deal with Dell Technologies to source the GPUs and supporting equipment.

Perhaps no number is more important to Microsoft investors than the company's growth rate in the cloud. Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing business grew revenue at a 39% clip in the June quarter, and a

Microsoft says users of its Azure cloud portal may be not be able to access Office 365, Minecraft or other services due to issues with its global content delivery network services.

OpenAI has come to terms on a massive 7-year, $38 billion deal with Amazon Web Services to secure cloud computing capabilities needed to power its suite of advanced AI tools such as ChatGPT and

Artificial intelligence cloud startup Lambda said on Monday it has entered into a multi-billion-dollar agreement with Microsoft to deploy tens of thousands of AI chip leader Nvidia's graphics processors.