The horse race between Amazon’s and Microsoft’s cloud computing businesses has gone through various phases over its nearly two-decade history, with the current AI boom pushing the rivalry to a new, and perhaps unsustainable, level of intensity.
Each company is set to spend roughly $200 billion this year building out its data centers—an unprecedented level of investment—in a frenzied bid to keep up with demand for AI services and to avoid getting overtaken by other cloud rivals like Google. The cloud titans have also forged partnerships and deals with the big AI model makers, creating a web of shifting alliances that each hopes could reshape the competitive landscape.
