Bloomberg reports Microsoft targets more than 38 GW of data-center capacity by 2032

Bloomberg reported that Microsoft is planning to expand its global data-center capacity from about 12 gigawatts now to more than 38 gigawatts by 2032, citing people familiar with the plans. If delivered, the reported road map would add more than 26 gigawatts of capacity for the infrastructure behind Azure cloud services and AI workloads. The figures describe an internal planning target, not a completed buildout or a formally announced Microsoft commitment.

The company’s public guidance covers a shorter horizon. On its fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter earnings call, Microsoft said it added one gigawatt of capacity during the quarter and remained on track to roughly double overall capacity in two years. Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said Azure customer demand continued to exceed available capacity, making the pace of new supply relevant to Azure AI customers. Microsoft said additional capacity brought online during the quarter was quickly monetized.

Gigawatts describe electrical capacity, not a fixed quantity of computing. The amount of usable compute also depends on the mix of chips, servers, networking and software efficiency. Microsoft said on its fiscal 2026 first-quarter earnings call that its infrastructure serves model training and inference as well as recommendation engines, databases and streaming. A larger power footprint could therefore support both AI services and broader Azure demand rather than mapping exclusively to AI accelerators.

Microsoft said it added 88 data centers across five continents in fiscal 2026, including 31 in the fourth quarter. It reported $41 billion in fourth-quarter capital expenditures, with roughly two-thirds directed to short-lived assets, primarily CPUs and GPUs. The company also said systems and software optimization increased throughput for Copilot workloads fourfold during the fiscal year.