My theory: - OpenAI and Oracle partnership: When Microsoft is 'at capacity' more demand can go to Oracle, so now Microsoft don't need to rapidly add capacity w

My theory: - OpenAI and Oracle partnership: When Microsoft is 'at capacity' more demand can go to Oracle, so now Microsoft don't need to rapidly add capacity with leases (which likely have a lower ROI than Microsoft owned and operated centres). - Longer term investments are still going ahead: Microsoft aren't cutting back on capex investment. They don't want to lease if they don't have to, but long term still see a huge market for compute that they will want to be a key supplier of. I think Microsoft's goal here is to focus on expanding their capex to be a long term winner instead of chasing AI demand at any cost in the short term. Likely because they already think they're in a pretty strong position already.