Microsoft is making a major investment into the Abu Dhabi-based AI firm G42 and it's not the only foreign deal

Microsoft is made recently. Steve Kovac is here to break down that for today's tech check.

Hey, Kottessa, yeah, this is an interesting deal,

but let me explain the high level first.

Microsoft is spending $1.5 billion for a minority stake

in G42, that's an AI startup based in the UAE.

The latest in several foreign AI and cloud investments

Microsoft has made in recent months,

and the move is designed to continue its head start in AI

as well as locking up another major customer for its

Azure Cloud.

As part of this deal, Microsoft President Brad Smith will join G42's board and G42

will use Microsoft's Cloud to run its AI models.

An additional billion dollars from the two companies together

will also go towards training a local AI workforce.

Now Microsoft has a growing network of AI footholds around the world.

Some examples announced in just the last six months or so a 2.9 billion dollar

investment in AI infrastructure in Japan that was from last week.

Opening an AI office in London, a small

investment in the French startup Mistral AI, and three and a half billion dollars

for data centers in Germany. Now what Microsoft gets out of today's deal, it's not just a stake in some hot AI startup,

it's also a guarantee of more business for its Azure Cloud unit in the Middle East.

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