Microsoft to invest $2.9 billon to expand AI, cloud infra in Japan

Microsoft said on Tuesday it would invest $2.9 billion over two years to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure in Japan, the latest in a series of overseas expansions by large tech firms to support the development of artificial intelligence.

The investment – the company’s largest in the 46 years of its operations in the country – will also go towards skilling three million people in AI and setting up a Microsoft Research Asia lab in Tokyo.

Server operators are expanding their data centers and cloud computing assets globally to support a boom in AI applications and workloads, after the late 2022 launch of ChatGPT.