Over half of the investment is reserved for infrastructure. Microsoft President Brad Smith frames AI investment as key to economic growth.

Microsoft Corp. has revealed plans to invest more than $80 billion in the construction of data centers for artificial intelligence workloads during its current fiscal year, part of an effort to cement its status as a leader in the fast-growing industry.

The tech giant has pledged that all data centers serving its cloud by this year will have power purchase agreements for 100 percent low-carbon energy.