Microsoft says it will slow or pause work on some data centres currently at an early construction stage.

Cloud operations president Noelle Walsh said in a LinkedIn post that the company had doubled its data centre capacity in the last three years, added more in 2024 than in any other year, and was on track to spend $80bn on data centres this year.

She acknowledged “heightened interest” in “the adjustments we are making to some early-stage datacenter infrastructure projects”, which she said were “common in rapidly growing industries”.

“By nature, any significant new endeavor at this size and scale requires agility and refinement as we learn and grow with our customers,” she said, adding: “What this means is that we are slowing or pausing some early-stage projects.”

She said training and educational programmes would continue.

Microsoft previously announced that construction work had been stopped at a planned second phase for an AI and cloud computing centre in Racine County, Wisconsin.

In 2024, Microsoft announced it would build a data centre made with cross-laminated timber in Virginia and in 2023, revealed it would work with Ferrovial on a data centre near Madrid.