Microsoft celebrates 40 years in Ireland
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Breakfast Business with Enterprise Ireland on Newstalk. The EU Commission launched an investigation into Amazon and Microsoft last week. The Commission is assessing whether the American companies should be considered gatekeepers as part of the Digital Markets Act and a debate whether the EU might in fact be stifling innovation in the technology sector. It comes as Microsoft celebrates 40 years and 40 billion euro investment in this country. But even amid this boom in investment, the technology giants have openly expressed concern that we may be looking at an AI bubble which could burst and bring on a recession. My next guest, Catherine Doyle, runs Microsoft here in Ireland, which employs 6,400 people, including LinkedIn, as well as its huge cloud business.
Good morning, Catherine. Good morning, Joe. You've spent 40 billion euros over the last 40 years. I presume it's not a billion a year. What have you spent it on?
So the 40 billion that we're announcing today is actually over the last 10 years.
Oh.
And it's our local investment and also the broader impact on the Irish economy. So it's a mix of the two.
Yeah. I mean, because you don't physically make stuff anymore, what has the investment gone on? Has it gone on training? Has it gone on investment in data centres? What's the money gone on?
So I guess we do still make stuff. Software has to be developed with a large R&D and engineering presence. So that would be a key part of what we have spent the money on. We've also got our financial and legal services here in Ireland as well. So the broader campus, the job investment, etc. would make up part of that.
What major investment has Microsoft made in Ireland over the past 40 years?
On top of that, we've supported 900 new start-ups. 500 partners. We've done 137 million in philanthropy, 120 million in donations, 940,000 hours of community and volunteering hours services. And the investment would span across people, research and development, engineering, innovation, community projects and, you know, the larger, wider economic impact projects.
And you're also announcing a new investment of €4.5 million in developing AI skills for everyone. How will that work?
What concerns exist about a potential AI bubble?
So that's really important, Joe, because as we step into this space, Ireland is doing really well globally and in Europe, which is really good for us to hear. Last year, our Work Trend Index showed that we were slightly behind other European countries, where earlier this year it showed us that we were moving up into a more leading position, showing that Ireland isn't necessarily market leading with this new technology, but we are very much fast followers. So recently Microsoft launched a diffusion report which showed the AI diffusion globally and Ireland ranked fourth.
In the world? In the world. A lot of people would be surprised at that.
Yeah, actually, we were delighted to see that because it's exactly... So what is AI diffusion? It's the amount or the number of people by populace using AI in the economy broadly.
Okay, so that could range from checking your Microsoft Copilot to predicting your next Netflix movie?
Yeah, absolutely. It could be anything at all. But the bottom line is we have a critical mass of people right now in our economy, citizens using AI, which bodes really well for our familiarity with the technology as we step into this space. It's really good to see that we're taking that step already.
You're not worried about an AI bubble, are you? Because there's a lot of money being spent by giant companies, including Microsoft Worldwide. You guys are spending $250 billion on data center investment as well. And there is a genuine concern that stocks related to AI have been overbought and it could all come tumbling down.
So, look, I can't comment on global stocks or what might happen there. But from a bubble point of view, I don't think so. So if we think about what AI is versus what other technologies were, if we look at things like the Internet, we had the Internet for roughly about, what, between six and eight years before we figured out how to commercialize it. Because there was structures, et cetera, behind it, you know, from a financial services point of view that needed to be put in place that weren't in place.
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