As OpenAI races to build AI data centers, Nadella reminds us that Microsoft already owns them

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday Tweet a video From the first massive AI system deployed at his company – or the AI ​​“factory” as Nvidia likes to call it. He promised that this is the “first of many” Nvidia AI factories that will be deployed across Microsoft Azure’s global data centers to run OpenAI workloads.

Each system is a cluster of more than 4,600 Nvidia GB300 laptops equipped with the highly sought-after Blackwell Ultra GPU chip and connected via Nvidia’s ultra-fast networking technology called InfiniBand. (Besides AI chips, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also had the foresight to break into the market in InfiniBand when his company I got melanox (compared to $6.9 billion in 2019.)

Microsoft promises it will deploy “hundreds of thousands of Blackwell Ultra GPUs” as these systems roll out globally. While the scale of these systems is striking (and the company has shared many… More technical details For hardware fans to check out), the timing of this announcement is also noteworthy.

It comes directly after OpenAI, its partner and A well-documented enemysigned two high-profile data center deals With Nvidia and AMD. In 2025, OpenAI has, by some estimates, amassed $1 trillion in commitments to build its own data centers. And CEO More are coming, Sam Altman said this week.

Clearly, Microsoft wants the world to know that it already has data centers – More than 300 The company said it is in 34 countries and is “uniquely positioned” to “meet the demands of today’s frontier AI.” These massive AI systems are also capable of running next-generation models with “hundreds of trillions of parameters,” she added.

We expect to hear more about how Microsoft is ramping up to serve AI workloads later this month. Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott will speak at Disable TechCrunchWhich will be held from October 27 to 29 in San Francisco.