Microsoft Corp. is planning to spend more than $7.9 billion on data centers, cloud computing and employees in the United Arab Emirates over the next four years, capitalizing on a US government clearance to ship artificial intelligence chips to the Gulf nation.

Microsoft's recent cloud-computing performance reflects that the company has been picking up market share at the expense of hyperscale rivals, according to Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Thomas Blakey. That's mainly driven by the company's artificial-intelligence advantages,

The five-year deal, valued at roughly $9.7 billion, includes a 20% prepayment and marks a significant step in IREN’s expansion into large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The company has also signed a $5.8 billion procurement deal with Dell Technologies to source the GPUs and supporting equipment.

After signing agreements to use computing power from Nvidia, AMD and Oracle, OpenAI is teaming up with the world’s largest cloud computing company.

Perhaps no number is more important to Microsoft investors than the company's growth rate in the cloud. Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing business grew revenue at a 39% clip in the June quarter, and a

Microsoft's AI infrastructure spending to meet growing cloud services demand is outpacing Wall Street expectations, deepening investor fears about the costs of sustaining the boom.

Microsoft says users of its Azure cloud portal may be not be able to access Office 365, Minecraft or other services due to issues with its global content delivery network services.

The seven-year agreement will see OpenAI gain access to Nvidia graphics processors to train its artificial intelligence models.

Microsoft has been growing its cloud computing business and announced a new agreement with OpenAI. Wall Street likes what it sees.