Welcome to the Cloud Wars Minute — your daily cloud news and commentary show. Each episode provides insights and perspectives around the “reimagination machine” that is the cloud.
In today’s Cloud Wars Minute, I explore how Microsoft and Oracle are battling for AI data center supremacy.
Highlights
00:15 — I want to talk about a couple of high-disruption companies — actually, three: Microsoft, Oracle, and OpenAI. And I think right now, it’s safe to say that those three companies, together with SoftBank, are pursuing investments upwards of a trillion dollars in what they’re calling AI data centers. I think this is a great thing for them to do.
01:19 — Microsoft has become more vocal about its role and leadership in these areas. Oracle, OpenAI, and SoftBank are jointly building what is called Stargate, sort of the infrastructure brand for OpenAI. Now, Microsoft has introduced its own brand for its AI data centers, Fairwater. It’s in the final stages of building what it is calling the world’s most powerful AI data center.
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02:18 — And I have no doubt that fairly soon, we’re going to hear from Google Cloud about some of its plans. I am less sanguine, in some ways, about what Amazon and AWS might do. I know that runs contrary to what a lot of people like to say — that AWS is still the king of the cloud. I haven’t — you know, I just haven’t taken that seriously in the last two or three years.
03:14 — So, Microsoft is doing very well with AI. Now, OpenAI, led by Sam Altman — they’re still doing some work with Microsoft on the cloud and AI. But it’s putting — starting in a year or two — a $300 billion investment with Oracle to build a chain of just absolutely staggeringly big, powerful data centers under the Stargate name.
04:09 — It’ll work with Oracle very closely on that. They’re also — in concert in some places and separately in others — pursuing some new data center deals with SoftBank. So OpenAI is working with Microsoft, working with Oracle, working with SoftBank — all in different ways. Oracle also has its own data center network for its rapidly growing cloud and AI business.
05:01 — So lots of talk right now, lots of action, lots of investment going into this. But ultimately, the beneficiaries of all this incredible — what I think is unprecedented — competition, will be businesses and regular individuals like you and me.
