While OpenAI races to build AI data centers, Nadella reminds us that Microsoft already has them

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella connected Thursday tweeted a video of his company’s archetypal deployed monolithic AI strategy — oregon AI “factory” arsenic Nvidia likes to telephone them. He promised this is the “first of many” specified Nvidia AI factories that volition beryllium deployed crossed Microsoft Azure’s planetary information centers to tally OpenAI workloads.

Each strategy is simply a clump of much than 4,600 Nvidia GB300s rack computers sporting the much-in-demand Blackwell Ultra GPU spot and connected via Nvidia’s super-fast networking tech called InfiniBand. (Besides AI chips, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang besides had the foresight to country the marketplace connected InfiniBand erstwhile his institution acquired Mellanox for $6.9 cardinal successful 2019.)

Microsoft promises that it volition beryllium deploying “hundreds of thousands of Blackwell Ultra GPUs” arsenic it rolls retired these systems globally. While the size of these systems is eye-popping (and the institution shared plentifulness more method details for hardware enthusiasts to peruse), the timing of this announcement is besides noteworthy.

It comes conscionable aft OpenAI, its spouse and well-documented frenemy, inked 2 high-profile information halfway deals with Nvidia and AMD. In 2025, OpenAI has racked up, by immoderate estimates, $1 trillion successful commitments to physique its ain information centers. And CEO Sam Altman said this week that much were coming.

Microsoft intelligibly wants the satellite to cognize that it already has the information centers — more than 300 successful 34 countries — and that they are “uniquely positioned” to “meet the demands of frontier AI today,” the institution said. These monster AI systems are besides susceptible of moving the adjacent procreation of models with “hundreds of trillions of parameters,” it said.

We expect to perceive much astir however Microsoft is ramping up to service AI workloads aboriginal this month. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott volition beryllium speaking astatine TechCrunch Disrupt, which volition beryllium held October 27 to October 29 successful San Francisco.