(Aug 10): Microsoft Corp is planning to “significantly” increase production of its next-generation artificial intelligence (AI) chips, the Information reported.

The company has been in discussions with supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co to secure manufacturing capacity for over 300,000 of the chips for delivery in 2027, the technology news site reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the situation. Microsoft is preparing to unveil its new Maia 300 chip this fall, the Information said. 

Microsoft’s chip push started years after Amazon.com Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google began designing their own chips, and the Maia line is widely seen as less mature than its rivals, which are already widely used to power AI services. Anthropic PBC alone has deals to use one million Amazon Trainium chips and Google Tensor Processing Unit accelerators. 

All three cloud-computing giants are aiming for technology that can be plugged into data centres and offer savings and other efficiencies to cloud customers. The high costs and short supply of chips from Nvidia Corp have fuelled a scramble to find alternative sources of computing power. Microsoft started rolling out Maia 200, its second-generation AI accelerator, earlier this year.

A Microsoft manager declined to comment on specific production plans but said the company ultimately aimed to produce gigawatts’ worth of Maia chips, the Information reported.

Microsoft shares rose about 1.3% at 9.48am in New York.

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