2026-07-23 — Thread opened, quiet
- Opened alongside its three siblings (google-capex, meta-capex,
aws-capex) so the term list catches Microsoft capex news going forward
— no dedicated item swept yet, stated plainly rather than backfilled
with a stretch. ⟨steer 2026-07-23⟩
← Backstory
(finding: artifacts/findings/microsoft-capex-2026-07-27.md · bundle: artifacts/bundles/microsoft-capex-2026-07-27/provenance.yaml)
- Sites: the “AI superfactory” linking Wisconsin and Georgia — Mount
Pleasant, WI Fairwater #1 finished construction 2026-06-23 (second
facility slated 2028); a second Fairwater site near Atlanta, GA,
unveiled 2025-11-12, is wired to it via 120,000+ miles of dedicated
fiber, forming Microsoft’s first named “AI superfactory,” reported at
“over 2GW” combined capacity.
(Microsoft Source) ⟨crawl 2026-07-27⟩
- Sites: a second, separate 2GW site in Texas — Pecos, Reeves County
TX announced 2026-06-22, ~2GW, co-located with a Chevron-built
natural-gas plant (“Project Kilby,” $7B, 20-year PPA, first power
2028) — a distinct 2GW figure from the WI+GA superfactory, not to be
summed with it without more confirmation; no single company-wide
total-GW figure exists anywhere in the public record.
(Microsoft blog) ⟨crawl 2026-07-27⟩
- Silicon: Maia 200 is explicitly dual-purpose — launched 2026-01-26
(TSMC 3nm, 140B transistors), deployed to serve both OpenAI’s GPT-5.2
inference and Microsoft’s own in-house model training/RL — Microsoft’s
own post confirms the split exists but gives no percentage; no
production-volume figure has been disclosed anywhere.
(Microsoft blog) ⟨crawl 2026-07-27⟩
- Power: Three Mile Island/Crane restart advancing toward 2027 — DOE
approved a $1B loan to Constellation (2025-11-18); NRC issued a draft
finding of no significant environmental impact and FERC approved 760MW
of interconnection rights (2026-06), with operators affirming a 2027
restart date.
(E&E News via Google News RSS) ⟨crawl 2026-07-27⟩
- Payoff: the $37B AI run-rate and the un-mapped $250B OpenAI
commitment — Microsoft’s FY26 Q3 (2026-04-29) reported AI run-rate at
$37B annualized (+123% YoY), Azure +40% YoY, and nine-month FY26 capex
of $80.1B; the October 2025 OpenAI deal set a $250B incremental Azure
purchase commitment with no disclosed timeframe, and no source
anywhere quantifies what share of Microsoft’s capex serves that
commitment versus Microsoft’s own workloads — the central open
question the earnings call (07-29) may or may not address.
(Microsoft IR) ⟨crawl 2026-07-27⟩
- Housekeeping: the “$97B/yr TTM” figure in the brief was not found
verbatim anywhere — it’s a plausible derivation from the $80.1B
nine-month FY26 IR figure, not a disclosed or press-stated number;
pending confirmation at the 2026-07-29 earnings call. ⟨crawl 2026-07-27⟩
