Holy shit. Bloomberg just verified one of my biggest scoops - that Microsoft only has 2gw of operational capacity. I had it at 1.993GW in prep for the story that [@aishadown.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:pazzytppogqe26vbcux5u2dx) and I did for the guardian. Vindication!
[www.theguardian.com/technology/2...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/aug/17/are-microsofts-ai-plans-being-held-back-by-a-shortage-of-chips)
for microsoft to get a bunch of cheap datacenters while hedge funds and r/wallstreetbets morons foot the bill
These AI data centre builds are packed with specific high power GPUs that are only useful for vector multiplication for AI, or mining cryptocurrency. To reduce overhead, they have kept non-GPU components to a minimum, because this lets you have more GPU processing per gigawatt. These data centres cannot be used for anything general purpose. General purpose computing needs CPUs, which they stocked as few of as possible.
is that necessarily a dealbreaker? GPUs are way overpriced right now because these AI companies control huge chunks of the supply. when openai goes kaput microsoft is gonna have control of both chatgpt and copilot and with it, a huge chunk of the used gpu market. if i’m not missing something huge, that could put them in a great position to absorb the demand from the ai bubble’s burst and unload the extra cards at whatever pace they want. plus i have no idea what the rest of the GPU compute market looks like. i assume if there’s a lot of demand then AWS wouldn’t be able to absorb much of it, and google cloud not as much as microsoft. obviously i’ve gotten way out of my depth here so i guess this is more of a question than a statement
These AI data centre builds are packed with specific high power GPUs that are only useful for vector multiplication for AI, or mining cryptocurrency. To reduce overhead, they have kept non-GPU components to a minimum, because this lets you have more GPU processing per gigawatt. These data centres cannot be used for anything general purpose. General purpose computing needs CPUs, which they stocked as few of as possible.
is that necessarily a dealbreaker? GPUs are way overpriced right now because these AI companies control huge chunks of the supply. when openai goes kaput microsoft is gonna have control of both chatgpt and copilot and with it, a huge chunk of the used gpu market. if i’m not missing something huge, that could put them in a great position to absorb the demand from the ai bubble’s burst and unload the extra cards at whatever pace they want. plus i have no idea what the rest of the GPU compute market looks like. i assume if there’s a lot of demand then AWS wouldn’t be able to absorb much of it, and google cloud not as much as microsoft. obviously i’ve gotten way out of my depth here so i guess this is more of a question than a statement