(Bloomberg) — Microsoft Corp.’s Satya Nadella discussed AI and cybersecurity in a meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk, becoming the latest tech industry leader to make overtures to the new administration.
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The conversation covered a range of topics, including Microsoft’s commitment to invest $80 billion in AI data centers globally, the US company said in a statement. More than $50 billion will be spent in the United States, creating American jobs, according to the release. Microsoft Chairman Brad Smith joined the meeting along with Trump’s running mate JD Vance.
Silicon Valley sought to warm relations with Trump after his victory last November, despite frequent clashes during his first term. Many traveled to Trump’s estate in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, where the president-elect and Musk held a series of meetings and private dinners to discuss plans for the next term. Semafor was the first to report Nadella’s dinner with Trump.
Smith warned the new Trump administration against “harsh regulations” related to AI. “The most important priority of American public policy should be to ensure that the American private sector can continue to advance with the wind at its back,” Smith wrote this month.
The country needs “a pragmatic export control policy that balances strong security protection of AI components in trusted data centers with the ability of U.S. companies to grow rapidly and provide a source of reliable supply to the many countries that are allies and friends of the United States,” Smith. wrote.
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Cloud infrastructure providers like Microsoft and Amazon.com Inc. have rushed to increase computing capacity by building new data centers. In the previous fiscal year ending June 2024, Microsoft spent more than $50 billion on capital expenditures, the vast majority of which was related to building a server farm fueled by demand for server services. artificial intelligence.
Much of the data center spending is on high-power chips from companies such as Nvidia Corp. and infrastructure providers such as Dell Technologies Inc. Huge AI-enabled server farms require a lot of power, prompting Microsoft to strike a deal to reopen a reactor at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, site of a famous partial meltdown in 1979. Amazon and Google have also signed nuclear energy agreements.