Microsoft, which operates some 300 data centres globally and is investing about
$80 billion more in them by the end of June, has a goal to become carbon negative by 2030, meaning it needs to find emission-free renewable power to be able to sustain the AI-driven expansion of its cloud-based data storage and usage.
Alistair Speirs, Microsoft's senior director for Datacentre & AI Infrastructure, said the global expansion in the use of artificial intelligence was creating new workloads that are not tied to a specific location by legislation, allowing Microsoft to build data centres where abundant emission-free power is available, such as the Nordic region.
"There'll be locations across the world but efficient energy infrastructure is going to be the deciding factor for a lot of these areas," he told Reuters on a visit to Finland.