Microsoft wanted 1.8 million AI chips installed by the end of 2024. Internal documents put it at 2.2 million now — after $280 billion.
A Guardian investigation published on 17 August, based on internal documents, says Microsoft has roughly 2.2 million AI chips installed across its data centres worldwide. The company had targeted 1.8 million by the end of 2024; nearly two years later, and about $280 billion of spending on land, buildings and computing infrastructure since 2022, it is at 2.2 million. Experts cited in the report say the data-centre capacity Microsoft describes publicly would normally imply many more chips than that. The report does not conclude Microsoft cannot buy chips: Satya Nadella has said before that chips can sit in inventory when there is no finished building or electricity connection to plug them into. Microsoft disputes the analysis, saying the estimates rest on incorrect assumptions, without specifying which ones.
Related stories
Anthropic expects to raise as much as SpaceX did — the largest listing in history — and could file publicly this month2026-08-21Nvidia is paying $6 billion for the machine that builds a rival's models — and hiring 109 of the people who ran it
2026-08-21The doctors and lawyers who grade AI answers are now a half-billion-dollar business — and this one grew fivefold in eight months
2026-08-21Anthropic still leads on business AI spending. For the first time since May, the gap is closing rather than widening.
2026-08-21Alibaba's AI business grew at its fastest pace in five and a half years. Its profit fell about 75 percent.
2026-08-20