Expanding Social & Environmental Impact in Spain with Cloud & AI

Microsoft has been in Spain for 37 years, and today, our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet has never been more relevant. This week, it was my pleasure to visit Madrid and talk with customers, colleagues and entrepreneurs about the amazing opportunity to drive positive economic, social and environmental impact with AI.

Building Spain’s AI and cloud infrastructure

Cloud and AI innovation is more than a strategic lever for productivity and economic growth, it’s a force for a positive social and environmental impact. That’s why, on Tuesday, I was excited to join Alberto Granados to announce the opening of a new cloud region, our first in Spain, across multiple locations in Comunidad de Madrid .

Between 2024 and 2030, the new cloud region and upcoming data center campus in the Aragon region will add €10.7 billion to Spain's GDP and create 76,600 new jobs in the local IT ecosystem, according to 国际数据公司 data. Crucially, it will enable the digital transformation of entire industries and the development of an AI-driven economy where everyone can thrive.

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Read more about the partnership and if you speak Spanish, my colleague, Manuel Fernández Sánchez explains more about the datacenter region in this video:

An ecosystem for inclusive economic growth

It would be impossible to drive broad and inclusive economic growth in Spain without our ecosystem of partners and cloud customers. Datacenters provide the vital backbone to empower modern society and the AI economy, but it’s people that will ensure this new universe of technology helps us to address key societal challenges.

From energy to automotive to healthcare, if AI is developed and deployed responsibly, it can have a positive impact on almost every industry. This will also require a new style of leadership. It was a pleasure to discuss these interconnected topics with a wide range of public sector and industry voices on my visit.

Thank you for an interesting and important discussion, Arantza Ezpeleta of ACCIONA Energía , Jaime Gutiérrez-Colomer Baranda of ATRESMEDIA , Miguel López-Valverde Argüeso and Elena Liria Comunidad de Madrid , Rosa Trigo Fernández of Ecoembes , Eduardo Abad Valdenebro of Garrigues , Francisco Jose Riberas Mera of Gestamp , Elisa Tarazona Ginés of Ribera Salud , Margarita Fernández de Prada of Iberdrola , Leandro Sigman of Insud Pharma . Francisco Reynés Massanet from Naturgy , @Alberto Duran from ONCE and Luis Cabra from Repsol . And also, to my colleagues Adrianna Mangion , Alberto Granados , Natalia Escobedo , Ignacio León Gil .

The hyperscale infrastructure we are building is the foundation to enable our millions of customers and partners around the world to achieve more by using and building on top of our trusted platform. I enjoyed speaking more about this mission at the Microsoft Envision AI Connection Event, alongside with my colleagues, Alberto Granados , Carolina Castillo Colmenarez , Alysa Taylor and Corey Sanders , and customers and long-standing partners, Norberto Mateos , 英特尔 , Dimitris Bountolos , Ferrovial ,? and Chema Alonso , Telefónica .

Inspiring positive impact entrepreneurs

Another way we can accelerate?real change is to work with positive impact entrepreneurs who have purpose in their DNA.

I was happy to showcase three brilliant entrepreneurs on stage in Madrid, who we work with closely and are having a strong positive impact on society. Let me introduce you:

• Founderz helps improve employability in society through artificial intelligence (AI) training. Their mission is to educate as many people as possible on AI topics, democratizing access to quality training materials and recordings. They provide scholarships to the underprivileged and have already trained more than 9,000 people across 20 countries.
• Mitiga Solutions is an ESG-focused company that provides algorithms and machine learning to understand the impact of climate change. They can predict weather-related disasters by applying ML and HPC to millions of stored data points.
• Quibim specializes in advanced medical imaging analysis for early detection of serious diseases, such as cancers, or the potential effects of a stroke. They use AI to transform radiological data into actionable insights for improved diagnostics and patient outcomes.

Thank you, Anna Cejudo Mercado from Founderz , ángel Alberich-Bayarri from Quibim , Natalia Adler from Mitiga , for emphasizing the importance of technology and innovation in creating a positive impact in society.

I leave Spain with a profound sense of excitement at the opportunity AI provides for everyone in the country. Whether you're a startup, an industry or public sector leader, a citizen and proud member of your community, AI can be an incredible source of growth and creativity, unlike anything we've seen before.

Gracias, Spain!

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Thank you to our customers and partners in Spain: 英特尔 , 埃森哲 , 凯捷咨询 , DXC Technology , KPMG , Kyndryl , NTT DATA , SEIDOR , Telefónica , Indra , Minsait , and 富士通 , and also to our partners from Spain’s Responsible AI Innovation Center: ENCAMINA , 安永 , Insight , Plain Concepts , 普华永道 , SoftwareOne , Tokiota and IBM . Also, we had representation from our Independent Software Vendors, such as NetApp , Adobe , Veeam Software AvePoint , MongoDB , 天睿 , Commvault , lyntia and Snowflake .