Here’s How Microsoft’s $175 Billion in Capital Expenditures Is Hurting Its Business | The Motley Fool

Microsoft (MSFT -1.93%) is among the big three cloud computing infrastructure providers and is always included in any list of AI hyperscalers. It’s heavily pursuing a massive amount of AI computing power for its internal service, Copilot, while also powering other products like OpenAI’s ChatGPT through its cloud computing platform, Azure.

To support this growth, Microsoft is investing heavily in data centers. This year alone, it expects its capital expenditures to hit $175 billion, with most of that going toward constructing and equipping data centers. That is leading to strong growth, but what if this growth is actually hurting its business?

While it may sound odd, Microsoft’s business is actually being harmed by the heavy pursuit of its cloud computing empire. Here’s why.

Microsoft is spending big

At first, you may imagine that the reason that these capital expenditures are hurting Microsoft is that it could be spending that $175 billion in ways that…