The US company Microsoft wants to invest more than three billion euros in its German artificial intelligence business by the end of 2025. North Rhine-Westphalia and Hesse in particular are likely to benefit from this.
The US technology group Microsoft plans to invest almost 3.3 billion euros in Germany over the next two years. Microsoft President Brad Smith announced today that the company wants to massively expand its data center capacities for applications in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing.
Biggest Individual investment from Microsoft at the location
The over three billion euros are the largest sum that Microsoft has spent in Germany in its 40-year history, explained Smith. Among other things, it will flow into an AI training program that will reach up to 1.2 million people. The Federal Republic ranks second worldwide in the use of AI by organizations and is the second most important developer of AI applications in Europe.
However, Germany only ranks eleventh in Europe when it comes to AI capabilities, the Microsoft President continued. The new training offerings would now improve programming skills and give people the necessary skills to use this technology.
“Strong signal for Germany”
According to dpa information, the investments are primarily going to North Rhine-Westphalia, where Microsoft wants to set up a new region for the cloud business with data storage. The group is looking for physical proximity to major customers such as Bayer and RWE in order to keep data transit times between the data centers and the on-site computers as short as possible.
North Rhine-Westphalia Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst (CDU) viewed the move as “a strong signal for Germany and a great contribution to structural change in the Rhenish region.” With this billion-dollar decision, Microsoft is making a significant contribution to sustainably driving forward the transformation of the economy in North Rhine-Westphalia. “The fact that a global player is making such an investment in North Rhine-Westphalia is a sign of trust and the result of concrete location policy.”
In addition, Hesse will probably also benefit from the billion-dollar investments. The Rhine/Main region is Germany’s leading location for data centers due to the large Internet node DE-CIX in Frankfurt. The existing Microsoft cloud region Rhine/Main will thus be further expanded.
Competition especially with Google
With a total of $3.5 billion, Germany now leads the list of announced investments by the world’s leading software company. In November, Microsoft President Smith pledged to invest a total of 2.5 billion pounds (2.9 billion euros) in the UK by 2026 to drive the growth of AI applications. Just over a month earlier, during a visit to Australia, he had promised an investment of five billion Australian dollars (around three billion euros) in the AI sector.
Microsoft is a leading player in the international AI market – also because the software company invested several billion dollars early on to invest in the Californian AI start-up OpenAI. The San Francisco company presented its text robot ChatGPT to a broader public in November 2022, triggering a wave of AI.
Microsoft has also invested billions more to build up large computing capacities for training AI. The group uses AI technology, for example, in its search engine Bing and as a “copilot” in its office programs. The Redmond-based software giant’s main competitor is Google with its AI program Gemini.
Torben Ostermann, ARD Berlin, tagesschau, February 15, 2024 12:53 p.m