There is new concern about the long-term sustainability of artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure investments after Wall Street analysts reported that Microsoft is reassessing its pledge to spend $80 billion this fiscal year to expand data center and computing capacity. Analysts confirmed the company started cancelling leases for “a couple hundred megawatts” of data center capacity in the U.S. Microsoft responded to the analyst report insisting that it’s sticking to its plan to allocate more than $80 billion of its cash to capital expenditures but conceded that it “may strategically pace or adjust our infrastructure in some areas.” The report prompted sharp declines in the stock of nuclear energy companies like Constellation, NuScale and Vistra whose fortunes are tied to data center growth and spending.
