Microsoft forecasts that it will invest $80 billion this fiscal year to build AI-enabled data centers—a spending spree that ups the pressure on tech companies of all sizes to make the right call on how much money they should deploy into the fast-rising technology.

Microsoft President Brad Smith, who leads a team of 2,400 business, legal and corporate affairs professionals, revealed the figure in a blog post Jan. 3 that likened AI’s potential transformative impact to the introduction of the steam engine in the 1700s and the harnessing of electricity to spur the industrial revolution in the late 1800s.