icrosoft is shelling out for AI power.

The tech giant announced a swathe of deals and partnerships on Monday, largely aimed at boosting its AI infrastructure and cloud capacity as competitors rapidly forge billions worth of data center deals.

With all of these deals, Nvidia’s chips are the common denominator:

• Microsoft signed a $9.7 billion deal with Australian cloud computing firm IREN on Monday. The partnership provides Microsoft access to Nvidia’s GB300 AI architecture.
• Separately, Microsoft announced a deal with cloud firm Lambda on Monday worth billions of dollars and powered by “tens of thousands” of Nvidia GPUs. 
• The company also announced further investment in AI capacity in the United Arab Emirates, totalling $15.2 billion by 2029. More than $5.5 billion of this investment will go towards AI and cloud infrastructure, and the investment will allow advanced Nvidia GPUs to be shipped into the country.

Inking all of these deals, it’s clear that Microsoft is feeling the pressure to build out its compute capacity as competitors pour billions into rapidly deploying infrastructure. 

The company noted during its earnings call last week that it's planning to double its data center footprint over the next two years as demand for its cloud business spikes. To meet demand, Microsoft may be eyeing alternatives, taking a particular interest in neoclouds and in cloud infrastructure purpose-built for AI workloads in recent months. 

But these partnerships underscore that, even as companies seek alternatives to Nvidia – such as Oracle’s partnership with AMD or Anthropic’s with Google – its chips are still far and away the leader of the pack.