Microsoft Corp. has agreed to rent a data center project in Texas that was originally being developed for Oracle Corp. and OpenAI, according to people familiar with the situation.
Representing about 700 megawatts of capacity, the site in Abilene is adjacent to Oracle’s and OpenAI’s flagship Stargate campus. Microsoft struck the deal with developer Crusoe after the two companies walked away from talks to occupy the site, said the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss a private matter.
The world’s largest software maker has stepped up data-center leasing in an attempt to meet demand for its cloud-computing customers as well as for internal work on artificial intelligence. During its most recent quarter, Microsoft inked about $50 billion in commitments to lease server farms under development. The flurry of activity marks a reversal from about this time last year, when the company hit pause on many data center projects.
