Microsoft has announced a $700 million investment in Poland. The firm plans to focus on expanding its existing data center in the country to support the development of AI, strengthen cybersecurity, and boost competitiveness.
“This investment by Microsoft represents an enormous vote of confidence in the Polish people, in the Polish economy, in the government of Poland and its leadership,” said Microsoft’s vice chair and president Brad Smith, speaking in Warsaw alongside Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.
“We do not make investments of this magnitude lightly,” he added. “But we have the confidence to invest here in Poland because of the work of recent years and what that has enabled us to look forward and see for the future.”In 2020, under Poland’s former government, Microsoft announced that it would invest $1 billion in Poland, including opening its first data center in the region. That center subsequently started operating in 2023.
Today, Smith announced the “second phase” of that investment, which will be implemented between now and the summer of 2026 and involve “an expansion of AI and our data center capacity here in Poland”.
As part of its plans, Microsoft intends to “strengthen our cybersecurity work with the Polish defense forces”, said Smith, noting that such cooperation was already “rapidly deepened” after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
“One of the things we’ve seen firsthand is how critical Poland has been for the defense of Ukraine,” said Microsoft’s president. His firm now wants to “take cybersecurity to the next level, by building our AI competencies and by working with the defence forces” to “ensure Poland remains at the technological frontier”.
Microsoft is expanding its data center footprint in Poland. The company today announces it intends to spend PLN 2.8 billion ($704m) by June 2026 to expand its hyperscale cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure in Poland.”The investment will support the growth of the existing data center campuses, bringing an expanding set of Azure services to meet the demand of customers in the region,” Microsoft said. Further details of what the expansion will include were not shared. Plans for a Polish Azure region were first announced in May 2020, with Microsoft at the time saying it planned to invest $1 billion into the eastern European country. The Azure cloud region launched around Warsaw in April 2023. Brad Smith, vice chair and president of Microsoft, said: “Microsoft’s data center investment is a vote of confidence in Poland’s leadership and economy. Our goal is to bring the most advanced AI infrastructure to every sector of the Polish economy, strengthening the nation’s economic competitiveness.”The company will also collaborate with the Polish National Defense to establish a framework to strengthen national cybersecurity.“This is an investment in our future, our security, our youth, our startups, and our scholars,” said Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland. “This is an investment that will provide Poles, especially the younger generation, with access to the most modern tools and opportunities offered by the best in the world. Tools, money, and investments are important, as is cooperation with our people and companies, but we will achieve the desired effects also by taking advantage of training opportunities.”Lightsource BP and Microsoft signed a 40MW solar PPA in September 2023. Microsoft is also transitioning its Polish data centers’ backup generators to be powered by renewable biofuels instead of diesel. Earlier this year, Microsoft announced it planned to spend $80 billion on building AI data centers in the 2025 financial year, a significant increase from last year. Last year saw the company announce several major investments to expand existing data center regions to accommodate AI infrastructure.
