After Its CEO Expressed Hesitation About AI, Microsoft Backing Out of Expensive New Data Centers

Last week, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella made an eyebrow-raising appearance on a podcast dismissing the hype around claims of having achieved "some [artificial general intelligence] milestone" as "nonsensical benchmark hacking." Most strikingly, Nadella admitted that AI simply hasn't generated much value so far, arguing that economic growth due to the tech would be a much more compelling demonstration of AI's actual accomplishments. It was an unusually muted response given the tens of billions of dollars the tech giant has poured, and is planning to pour, into the development of AI and the infrastructure to support it — despite real-world applications for the tech remaining few and far between. Is Nadella worried about a looming dot-com-like bubble that's set to burst? Was the emergence of Chinese AI startup DeepSeek's hyper-efficient reasoning AI model, which shook up the entire industry last month, an early warning shot? Now, investment banking company TD Cowen has informed Bloombe ... Read full article.