Illustrator: Harriet Lenneman
The Big Take
Microsoft CFO’s AI Spending Runs Up Against Tech Bubble Fears
After making a controversial call to pause some data center development last year, Amy Hood is navigating one of the toughest jobs in tech.
Amy Hood took a look at the numbers, didn’t like what she saw and stomped the brakes.
It was late 2024, and Microsoft Corp. was spending more in a single quarter than it once shelled out in an entire year, racing to build data centers and stock them with chips in anticipation of rising demand for artificial intelligence and other cloud services.