Last week, five of the Big Seven tech companies released their earnings reports, which included information on artificial intelligence . and data centers The scale of Nvidia 's capital expenditures has attracted widespread attention. With a market capitalization exceeding $5 trillion, it has become the company with the largest increase in market capitalization this earnings season, just one month before earnings release.
At the start of this week, the market saw several major transaction announcements, including Amazon. Microsoft announced a $38 billion computing power partnership with OpenAI. They announced increased investment in the Middle East and signed a contract with cloud service provider IREN.
Microsoft increases investment in the UAE to expand its data centers in the United States.
Microsoft announced on Monday that it will increase its investment in the United Arab Emirates, planning to raise its total investment in the UAE to $15.2 billion by 2030.
This investment includes a $1.5 billion equity investment in AI company G42 and over $5.5 billion in capital expenditure to expand Microsoft's AI and cloud infrastructure projects in the region. Microsoft President Brad Smith stated at the International Petroleum Technology Conference (ADIPEC) in Abu Dhabi, "It is the combination of technology, talent, and trust that allows us to see the UAE forging a powerful synergy for the future development of AI, technology, and the entire economy."
Meanwhile, amid a wave of tech giants expanding their U.S. data centers , Microsoft signed a $9.7 billion deal with IREN, securing new computing power. Under the five-year agreement, Microsoft will be able to use IREN's Nvidia GB300 chip. As the tech giant continues to expand its artificial intelligence services, this chip will provide it with enhanced data processing capabilities.
To meet the new demand, IREN also partnered with Dell Technologies. Dell Technologies has entered into a separate agreement to purchase new graphics processing units (GPUs) and related equipment for $5.8 billion. This hardware is expected to be deployed in phases at IREN's Childress, Texas campus next year.
In the United States, data centers are playing an increasingly important role in driving the artificial intelligence boom. Tech giants such as Microsoft, Amazon , and Google are investing tens of billions of dollars in building massive new facilities to house the thousands of GPUs needed to train and run AI models. However, this rapid expansion of data centers has also brought a series of pressures, including a shortage of GPUs for data processing and issues with the power supply needed to run these facilities.
Microsoft announced plans to double its data center size over the next two years to cope with surging demand for cloud and computing services. Its first-quarter capital expenditures soared to a record nearly $35 billion, a 74% year-over-year increase, far exceeding the $30.34 billion previously estimated by analysts. The company expects its fiscal 2026 capital expenditures to grow at a rate exceeding last year's 58%, implying investments of at least $140 billion and a projected increase of over 80% in total AI productivity.
Recently, Microsoft signed four agreements with Nscale to deploy approximately 200,000 NVIDIA AI processors in Europe. At the same time, the company also pledged to invest $17.4 billion in the Dutch company Nebius over five years to add computing power to its data infrastructure through similar GPU infrastructure collaborations.
Amazon and OpenAI reach $38 billion agreement
OpenAI has reportedly signed a seven-year, $38 billion cloud services procurement agreement with Amazon. This agreement will grant OpenAI access to hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) for training and running its AI models.
This collaboration also represents a significant endorsement of trust in Amazon Web Services (AWS), the cloud services arm of e-commerce giant Amazon. Previously, some investors worried that AWS had fallen behind competitors like Microsoft and Google in the AI race; however, AWS's strong growth, as reported in its Q3 earnings report, has alleviated these concerns to some extent. On Monday, Amazon's stock price hit a record high, adding over $100 billion to the company's market capitalization.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the company has committed $1.4 trillion to develop 30 gigawatts (GW) of computing resources, a scale roughly equivalent to the electricity needs of 25 million American households. “The large-scale development of cutting-edge AI requires massive and reliable computing power. Our partnership with AWS will strengthen a broad computing ecosystem that will power the next AI era and make advanced AI technologies accessible to everyone.”
Amazon has now made its open-source weight models available to OpenAI through the Amazon Bedrock platform. Amazon Bedrock is an AI model platform for enterprise customers using AWS, offering a variety of AI models to choose from.
It's worth noting that Altman previously revealed OpenAI's ultimate goal is to add 1 gigawatt of computing power per week, with each gigawatt currently requiring a capital investment of over $40 billion. Last week, OpenAI completed a major restructuring, paving the way for its initial public offering (IPO), with the company's valuation potentially reaching $1 trillion.
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