Microsoft Azure deploys first large-scale cluster of Nvidia GB300 for OpenAI workloads

[Data center corridor filled with servers illuminated by bright white light]
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Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/MSFT]) Azure has deployed its first large-scale cluster of Nvidia's (NASDAQ:NVDA [https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/NVDA]) GB300 NVL72 systems, which feature more than 4,600 Blackwell Ultra GPUs connected with the Quantum-X800 Infiniband networking platform.

"First of many as we scale to hundreds of thousands of GB300s across our DCs, and rethink every layer of the stack across silicon, systems, and software to support next gen AI workloads," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella in a post [https://x.com/satyanadella/status/1976322455288545343] on X on Thursday.

"This co-engineered system delivers the world's first at-scale GB300 production cluster, providing the supercomputing engine needed for OpenAI to serve multitrillion-parameter models," said Ian Buck, Nvidia's vice president of Hyperscale and High-performance Computing. "This sets the definitive new standard for accelerated computing."

"Our collaboration helps ensure customers like OpenAI can deploy next-generation infrastructure at unprecedented scale and speed," added Nidhi Chappell, corporate vice president of Microsoft Azure AI Infrastructure.

The system provides 37 terabytes of fast memory and 1.44 exaflops of FP4 Tensor Core performance per VM, creating a large, unified memory space needed for reasoning models, agentic AI systems and multi-modal generative AI.

The announcement today tightens the bond between Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI. Last month, Nvidia revealed its plans [https://seekingalpha.com/news/4497243-nvidia-plans-to-invest-up-to-100b-in-openai-progressively-to-build-ai-data-centers] to invest up to $100B in OpenAI to build and deploy at least 10 gigawatts of AI data centers with Nvidia systems.

Nvidia shares edged up 2% by afternoon trading on Thursday, reaching a new intraday high.

Microsoft continues to invest heavily in its data center footprint. The tech giant reported capital expenditures of $88.7B in fiscal year 2025, which ended June 30. During the first quarter of fiscal 2026, it plans to spend $30B, which is about a 50% year-over-year increase.

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