Microsoft’s plan to spend USD 10 bn in the Gulf through 2030 is the biggest new foreign commitments to the region since the Iran war kicked off

Microsoft plans to spend more than USD 10 bn across the Gulf before 2030, the company said, expanding its total outlay on running and expanding its cloud and AI investments despite the Iran war. That sum, including about USD 2 bn more than the tech giant had previously committed to spending here in this period, is one of the largest foreign commitments to building tech infrastructure in the region since the conflict began in February 2026.

Details: The spending will be spread across the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait and go to AI and cloud infrastructure among other things, Reuters reports. The figure is total outlay — including operating expenditures and capital invested through 2030. Microsoft is committing c. USD 2 bn more than it had originally earmarked for the Gulf in this period, Bloomberg notes.

Microsoft’s gamble: Allocating fresh capital to the region essentially signals that Microsoft believes the Gulf’s AI future is just as promising now as it was before the war began. In March, Iranian drones damaged two Amazon data centers in the UAE and another in Bahrain. There have been no known attacks against tech infrastructure since then, though the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps has argued that they are fair game.

The pledge: “We’re sustaining all the investments we planned to make before this ​conflict started, and we’re in fact adding to them…It’s an aggressive spending schedule,” ​Microsoft President Brad Smith told Reuters.

But things may never be quite the same: Gulf AI officials have tried to project that everything is business as usual since the war started — but they’ve also adapted to the changed threat environment, announcing plans to “harden” data centers and other infrastructure against future attacks. The UAE’s AI champion G42 is reportedly considering revamping its flagship project to be a cluster of data centers spread across the country rather than a single 26 sq km campus in Abu Dhabi.