Microsoft said on Wednesday it is “slowing or pausing” some of its data center projects, describing the move as a show of flexibility as the artificial intelligence (AI) industry evolves.
“In recent years, demand for our cloud and AI services grew more than we could have ever anticipated and to meet this opportunity, we began executing the largest and most ambitious infrastructure scaling project in our history,” Noelle Walsh, president of Microsoft cloud computing operations, wrote in a Wednesday post on LinkedIn.
“By nature, any significant new endeavor at this size and scale requires agility and refinement as we learn and grow with our customers. What this means is that we are slowing or pausing some early-stage projects,” she said.
The announcement comes as AI companies pour unprecedented amounts of funding into infrastructure to meet the computational and energy demands of the emerging technology.
