Money Well Spent

So much money spent on Spicy Clippy.

In the last fiscal year, Microsoft’s capex (capital expenditure) was $55.7 billion, up 75% year-over-year, with more than one third ($19 billion) spent in the quarter ending June 30 2024. This is reportedly split 50-50 between infrastructure and tech, which suggests an aggressive data center build-out, with Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood saying that Microsoft “expect[s] capital expenditures to increase on a sequential basis” given cloud and “AI demand” that, as I’ve just said, isn’t really there.

Worse still, Hood added — and I quote Microsoft’s earnings call — that AI-related spend represented “nearly all of our total capital expenditures,” with “roughly half” for infrastructure needs that will “support monetization over the next 15 years and beyond.”

Could they ask Spicy Clippy how to make Windows remember my printer?