Microsoft will continue to expand its investments. Barcelona And Madrid. This was confirmed Monday at a business breakfast held in the Catalan capital by Alberto Granados, head of the tech giant in Spain. Both cities will play a key role in the development of their two core businesses: artificial intelligence (AI) and the cloud, which became especially popular after the emergence of ChatGPT.
Granados has confirmed that Microsoft will strengthen its artificial intelligence ‘center’ staff in the Catalan capital, something that was already reported this January. There were currently about 30 specialists in advanced fields and will now be expanded to a total of 100 professionals. Will professionals continue to be hired? “We hope so too. We are very optimistic about the AI business“, noted Granados, celebrating the “knowledge center made in Catalonia.” Inaugurated in September 2021, this “center” is one of the company’s eight bases of operations for research and development of artificial intelligence applications around the world.
Microsoft continues at full speed. Earlier in the year, the multinational company invested another $10 billion in OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, a model that can chat and answer any question without error, simulating human reasoning. “The price of leaving quickly, fix many things in a short time“, he admitted. In just over two months, this chatbot reached 100 million unique users per month, making it the fastest growing consumer app in history.
In February, Microsoft shook up the tech industry by announcing that it would integrate this tool into all of its services, from the Bing search engine to Windows, PowerPoint or Azure cloud services. Well strengthen the company’s business. “We’ve never had so many strategic alliances,” he said. This AI application is being developed at the Barcelona headquarters, which has opened the door to a business race where giants like Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon or Meta (which owns Facebook) are also competing.
Investment in Madrid
Microsoft’s Spanish bet has only gone further. Last Thursday, Microsoft Europe head Cindy Rose confirmed the company’s plans to transform Madrid into a cloud region by building three data centers in the coming months; this is a possible claim after working side by side with Moncloa for two years. The Community of Madrid calculates that this investment will contribute to the creation of more than one investment. 13,200 new direct and indirect jobs. IDC consultancy stated that this business decision will contribute more than 5,300 million Euros to Madrid’s GDP between 2022 and 2025.
In mid-January, Microsoft announced that it would lay off 10,000 employees, 5% of the global workforce. While the company’s cuts will not affect its investments in Barcelona and Madrid, it has also affected the Spanish workforce. “Spain has a brutal talent gap“, Granados complained. And 46% of Spanish companies don’t find the talent they’re looking for. That’s why Microsoft has promoted a training program in the country over the past two years that has trained 1.6 million people in its use of one of its technologies.
During his meeting with businessmen, Granados also touched upon the European consultation for tech giants like Microsoft to co-finance the construction of telecommunications networks, an alliance between Brussels and operators staged during the Mobile World Congress (MWC). It is celebrated these days in L’Hospitalet de Llobregat. “‘We do not compete with telecos, we cooperate’‘ he pointed.