Semiconductor stocks were boosted on Monday after Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) said it is on track to invest $80 billion into "AI-enabled" data centres, of which more than half will be in the US.
In a blog post published late on Friday, vice chair Brad Smith said the company's and America's technological strength was possible thanks to "partnerships founded on large-scale infrastructure investments that serve as the essential foundation of AI innovation and use."
He pointed to Microsoft's key partnership with ChatGPT developer OpenAI, as well as other startups like Anthropic and xAI.
For 2025, he said Microsoft is "on track" to invest approximately $80 billion to build out AI-enabled datacenters to train AI models and deploy AI and cloud-based applications around the world.
"More than half of this total investment will be in the United States, reflecting our commitment to this country and our confidence in the American economy."
For the first quarter of its fiscal year to June 2025, Microsoft said it spent $20 billion on capital expenditures and assets acquired under finance leases worldwide, plus another $14.9 billion on property and equipment.
Finance chief Amy Hood said at the time that capex was likely to increase sequentially in the quarter ending December.
Semiconductor stocks led gains on Wall Street on Monday morning, with NVIDIA Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA, ETR:NVD), Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO, ETR:1YD) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (NASDAQ:AMD, ETR:AMD) up 3.1%, and ASML Holding NV (NASDAQ:ASML) rising 5.6%.