After announcing its plans to invest $2.2 billion to advance new cloud and AI infrastructure in Malaysia in May, Microsoft has made yet another major investment plan.
Investment plans in Sweden
Today, the tech giant announced that it plans to invest $3.2 billion in Sweden. The investment will be made in the AI and cloud facilities in the country over a two-year period. This is touted to be the largest-ever infrastructure investment in Sweden.
Microsoft aims to help boost the country’s global competitiveness by delivering AI training to nearly 250,000 citizens. This is equivalent to 2.4% of the country’s population. Furthermore, the company will increase capacity at its three data centres in the country – located at Gavle, Sandviken and Staffanstorp.
In Sweden, Microsoft will provide more than 20,000 graphic processing units (GPUs), needed for training AI models.
AI growth
As leading technology companies expand their infrastructure to fuel the heavy demand for AI, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) found that data centres could use up to 9% of the total electricity generated in the US by 2030.
Notably, the estimated annual growth rate of AI electricity usage is between 3.7% and 15% through 2030, based on the efficiency of newly built data centres. A new data centre can use as much electricity as 750,000 homes, according to the institute, which cited energy company earnings calls.
Similar AI investments
In recent months, Microsoft has announced similar AI investments in other countries, including in France where it vowed to invest €4 billion and Japan where it announced a $2.9 billion AI push.
“Microsoft’s largest investment in our history in Sweden” would enable the Scandinavian country “to build world leading AI data centre infrastructure,” the company’s president and vice chair Brad Smith told reporters at a joint press conference with Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson.
“A big part of the reason we’re able to do this is because of Sweden’s forward-looking energy policy, the plentiful access to green energy, whether it’s carbon free energy, or renewable energy,” Smith said.
“It will also help accelerate development in other areas. This huge investment in Sweden has the potential to pave the way for other investments,” he further added.
