Microsoft has said it is on track to invest around $50 billion in addressing the "growing AI divide."

In a blog post penned by vice chair and president of Microsoft, Brad Smith, and VP and chief responsible AI officer, Natasha Crampton, the cloud giant noted that its latest AI Diffusion report found that AI usage in the "Global North" is roughly double that of the "Global South."

With that in mind, Microsoft has said it will be investing $50bn in helping bring the Global South up to pace, some of which will go toward AI infrastructure.

According to the company's five-part program, it has already spent around $8bn in the last fiscal year alone on cloud and AI data centers in the Global South, aiming to bring connectivity to some 250 million people. These data centers will be located in regions including India, Mexico, and countries in Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and the Middle East.

Earlier this week, Microsoft revealed it had brought two new data halls online in Brazil. In India alone, the company has said it will invest $17.5bn in AI infrastructure.

"We’re coupling our investments in data centers with an ambitious effort to help close the Global South’s connectivity divide. We’ve been pursuing aggressively a global goal to extend Internet access to 250 million people in unserved and underserved communities in the Global South, including 100 million people in Africa," Smith and Crampton wrote.

Outside of infrastructure investments, Microsoft is also donating to schools and nonprofits, aiming to upskill locals; investing in multilingual AI tools; innovating AI solutions for local needs; and continuing to measure diffusion to guide future AI policies and investments.

In the cloud company's recent earnings call, Microsoft said it had a quarterly capex of $37.5bn, a new high to date.