This morning, I stood in Warsaw with Poland’s Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, and introduced Microsoft’s newest cloud and AI infrastructure funding in Europe. Constructing on our preliminary billion-dollar funding to launch a Polish cloud area in 2023, I introduced that Microsoft will spend one other $700 million by the center of subsequent yr to increase our computing capability within the nation. And we are going to deepen our work with Polish Nationwide Protection to strengthen Poland’s cybersecurity, together with by working collectively on the event of AI competencies and rising digital applied sciences, together with new AI and quantum breakthroughs.
This marks the newest crucial step for Microsoft’s enterprise, financial, and political relationships in Poland – and in Europe as an entire.
In the course of the previous 16 months, we now have introduced greater than $20 billion in AI and cloud infrastructure investments that symbolize an necessary a part of our datacenter enlargement throughout 15 European nations. Immediately’s funding in Poland builds on the built-in provide chain we’re constructing with producers throughout the EU. It calls on suppliers which can be manufacturing crucial elements not solely in Poland however in Italy, France, Germany, Finland, Eire, and the UK. It additionally consists of elements manufactured and exported from Indiana in the USA. It’s the kind of funding that creates jobs and fosters financial development all through Europe and throughout the Atlantic.
Selling Trans-Atlantic Funding, Commerce, and Financial Development
The American expertise sector is creating world-leading AI expertise and is concentrated on being a trusted “companion of alternative” all over the world. And European coverage leaders are targeted on mobilizing extra capital and growing productiveness by “closing the innovation hole.” Even in a time of fragmenting geopolitics, at present’s announcement illustrates that these two expertise ambitions are extra aligned than divergent.
In a number of methods, our funding in Poland places each these targets into follow. It demonstrates how vastly the expertise sector has modified since I first joined Microsoft as an worker in Paris greater than 31 years in the past. Whereas we develop and supply world-leading expertise services globally, we now help these with monumental nationwide investments in infrastructure and enormous numbers of native staff. Greater than ever, expertise requires coordinated investments that join nations and span oceans.
Sustained Know-how Assist Throughout a Decade of Crises
Equally necessary, expertise has grow to be a lynchpin for nationwide wants in occasions of disaster. European Fee President Ursula von der Leyen has aptly put latest historical past in perspective. As she highlighted, Europe faces a competitiveness problem that comes because the third disaster of the 2020s, after the pandemic and the battle in Ukraine.
It’s value reflecting on the crucial function of expertise in serving to to help the responses wanted for every of those crises.
5 years in the past this month, the primary pandemic in a century actually began to close doorways all over the world. At Microsoft, our staff and companions used new video and productiveness expertise like Groups to maintain the financial system shifting ahead in each nook of Europe. In simply days, companies, faculties, universities, hospitals, and governments maintain their operations by shifting on-line.
Two years later, the Russian navy invaded Ukraine. At Microsoft, we helped transfer Ukraine’s crucial information and expertise companies to our datacenters throughout Europe, making certain their continued operation outdoors the vary of cruise missile and air assaults. And like a number of different expertise corporations, we instantly helped Ukraine’s officers and residents defend their nation from Russian cyberattacks. As an organization, we offered greater than $250 million of free expertise and monetary help. And we now have sustained this substantial help to this present day.
As Europe now launches a brand new “competitiveness compass,” expertise will once more play an indispensable function. Particularly as working-age populations shrink and getting old populations increase, financial development and prosperity will rely greater than ever on new expertise. Productiveness development would require it. And the competitiveness of Europe’s many nice industries and firms, giant and small, will rely upon their capability to hone their ongoing management in crucial scientific domains and put their information to work. Throughout the continent, European establishments might want to harness the facility of AI and the cloud.
A Sturdy Basis for Europe’s AI Transition
AI is quickly turning into what economists name a Normal Objective Know-how, or GPT. In distinction to single-purpose applied sciences, GPTs increase innovation and productiveness throughout the whole financial system. All through historical past, transformative GPTs like ironworking, electrical energy, machine tooling, pc chips, and software program haven’t solely pushed financial development however sparked new discoveries and innovations, altering the way in which we reside and work.
The excellent news is that the inspiration for Europe’s AI transition is already being laid. Trade leaders are investing tens of billions to assemble state-of-the-art infrastructure to assist Europe entry, undertake, and innovate on the world’s most superior cloud and AI expertise. And firms like Microsoft are growing and providing revolutionary AI instruments and important companies which can be prepared to be used by each sector of each European financial system.
As an organization, we’re growing and working our AI infrastructure and platform companies with a relentless deal with Europe’s wants. That is one cause we introduced our AI Entry Ideas in Barcelona a yr in the past. These eleven rules govern our operations and are designed to make sure that Microsoft’s AI infrastructure is accessible, open, and out there on truthful phrases to the whole European financial system.
As we’ve put these rules into follow, we’ve acknowledged the important function of open-source software program and AI fashions for European researchers, start-ups, companies, and governments. We’ve launched the Azure AI Foundry, a platform designed to assist builders construct, run, and optimize AI-driven functions. The Foundry helps versatile decisions and now helps greater than 1,800 AI fashions, from OpenAI’s o3-mini to open-source fashions like Llama, Mistral, and others, all giving Europe the instruments it wants to remain aggressive within the fast-moving AI panorama. European builders can then use our Fashions as a Service providing to distribute their merchandise immediately to our datacenters all over the world, so clients can name on them for AI-powered functions.
We additionally acknowledge that expertise innovation requires investments in folks. That’s why we’re investing in our AI Skilling Initiative throughout Europe. We’re partnering with authorities, training, trade, and civil society to assist deliver AI expertise to customers, builders, and organizational leaders. By way of our strategic partnerships, we now have already helped to talent 2.9 million Europeans and are on monitor to have interaction 8 million folks by the top of the yr.
Know-how Collaboration Constructed on Interdependence
We readily acknowledge that European leaders typically fear about turning into overly depending on American expertise. We respect that such questions are each pure and bonafide. We take them severely and work arduous to handle them, together with by understanding European values, supporting European wants, and adapting to European guidelines.
Alongside the way in which, we frequently level to a second expertise dimension that too simply is ignored. The truth is that this dependence runs each methods.
As an organization, we’re pouring tens of billions of {dollars} of funding into buying land, setting up huge buildings, bringing further electrical energy to the grid, and putting in the world’s most superior computing, networking, liquid cooling, and different expertise.
These datacenters will not be constructed on wheels.
As soon as constructed, these billions of {dollars} in infrastructure are everlasting and topic to native legal guidelines, laws, and governments. Time inevitably brings modifications. It’s crucial as an organization that we continually stay targeted on incomes and sustaining our “license to function” inside every nation. With datacenters, this begins with every area people and runs as much as officers with EU-wide obligations. Our financial dependence on Europe runs deep.
As Microsoft celebrates its 50th birthday lower than two months from now, we glance again at greater than 4 many years of European presence and help. As an organization, we’ve seen many issues change. And we ourselves have modified. We’ve put down deep roots, with staff and households in communities and nations throughout the continent.
However even amid fixed change, one factor has been fixed. Our help for Europe has been not solely regular however steadfast.
