Microsoft says it has linked massive data centers in Wisconsin and Atlanta — roughly 700 miles and five states apart — through a high-speed fiber-optic network to operate as a unified system.
The announcement Wednesday morning marks the debut of what the company is calling its AI “superfactory,” a new class of data centers built specifically for artificial intelligence. The facilities are designed to train and run advanced AI models across connected sites — a setup that Microsoft describes as the world’s first “planet-scale AI superfactory.”
Unlike traditional cloud data centers that run millions of separate applications for different customers, Microsoft says the new facilities are designed to handle single, massive AI workloads across multiple sites. Each data center houses hundreds of thousands of Nvidia GPUs connected through a high-speed architecture known as an AI Wide Area Network, or AI-WAN, to share computing tasks in real time.
Microsoft says it’s using a new two-story data center design to pack GPUs more densely and minimize latency, a strategy enabled in part by a closed-loop liquid cooling system.
By linking sites across regions, the company says it’s able to pool computing capacity, redirect workloads dynamically, and distribute the massive power requirements across the grid so that it isn’t dependent on available energy resources in one part of the country.
This unified supercomputer will train and run the next generation of AI models for key partners such as OpenAI, and for Microsoft’s own internal models.
The new approach shows the rapid pace of the AI infrastructure race among the world’s largest tech companies. Microsoft spent more than $34 billion on capital expenditures in its most recent quarter — much of it on data centers and GPUs — to keep up with what it sees as soaring AI demand.
Amazon is taking a similar approach with its new Project Rainier complex in Indiana, a cluster of seven data center buildings spanning more than 1,200 acres. Meta, Google, OpenAI and Anthropic are making similar multibillion-dollar bets, collectively putting hundreds of billions into new facilities, chips, and systems to train and deploy AI models.
Some analysts and investors see echoes of a tech bubble in the rush to build AI infrastructure, if business customers don’t realize enough value from AI in the near term. Microsoft, Amazon and others say the demand is real, not speculative, pointing to long-term contracts as evidence.
Story corrected at 11:30 a.m. PT to accurately reflect Microsoft’s announcements about which companies will have AI models trained in the facilities.
