Microsoft's AI infrastructure spending to meet growing cloud services demand is outpacing Wall Street expectations, deepening investor fears about the costs of sustaining the boom.

Internet users were left in the dark Wednesday as problems with Microsoft services triggered widespread outages across popular sites, like Xbox, Kroger, and Starbucks. Tens of thousands of users reported experiencing outages with Microsoft Azure, the tech giant’s cloud platform, Wednesday afternoon, according to DownDetector.

The company is seeing more demand for its cloud computing and AI services than it can keep up with, a challenge that is supercharging profits.

Microsoft has pulled this off while relaxing its grip on Open AI by, for instance, letting it use alternative sources of computing power so long as it asks first. On October 28th Microsoft loosened the setup once again,