On February 25, it was reported that investment bank TD Cowen recently released a report saying that Microsoft has begun to cancel or no longer renew a large number of data center computing power contracts leased in the United States. This move may reflect Microsoft's concerns about its own excessive AI computing power construction.

As the world's second largest cloud service provider (CSP), Microsoft's market share reached 24% in the fourth quarter of last year. As Microsoft reduces the scale of data center computing power leasing, the outside world has begun to question whether its attitude towards the prospects of AI has become more cautious, and is worried that this move may affect the operating performance of major server OEMs such as Hon Hai, Quanta and Wiwynn.

In response to TD Cowen's report, Microsoft issued a press release on the 24th, reiterating that its annual spending target by the end of June remains unchanged, but did not make specific comments on the content of the report.

TD Cowen learned through supply chain channels last Friday (21st) that Microsoft, as the largest cloud service supporter behind OpenAI, has let more than 1GW of large-scale site contracts expire and abandoned several transactions involving 100MW.

In addition, Microsoft has also stopped the "statement of qualifications", which is usually a step before the formal signing of a lease. TD Cowen pointed out that Microsoft's strategy is similar to the practice of competitors such as Meta to cut capital expenditures.

Although Microsoft has said that it plans to invest $80 billion in AI data centers this year, and in the earnings call at the end of January, CEO Nadella emphasized that the company must continue to invest to meet the rapidly growing demand, the move to reduce the scale of leasing has still attracted widespread attention from the market.

It is worth noting that with the launch of an open source AI model claimed to be comparable to US technology at a very low cost by DeepSeek, a startup in mainland China, investors have more doubts about the rationality of the continued huge expenditures of technology giants such as Microsoft. This trend may further affect the market's expectations for the future development of the AI ​​field.