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Microsoft Corp. has walked away from new data center projects in the US and Europe that would have amounted to a capacity of about 2 gigawatts of electricity, according to TD Cowen analysts, who attributed the pullback to an oversupply of the clusters of computers that power artificial intelligence.
The analysts, who rattled investors with a February note highlighting leases Microsoft had abandoned in the US, said the latest move also reflected the company’s choice to forgo some new business from ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which it has backed with some $13 billion. Microsoft and the startup earlier this year said they had altered their multiyear agreement, letting OpenAI use cloud-computing services from other companies, provided Microsoft didn’t want the business itself.