Microsoft said in April that a shortage of data center infrastructure needed to deploy AI models was hampering its ability to capitalize on the boom in the technology. The company has taken an early lead in the AI race thanks to its investment in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and has been pouring billions of dollars into cloud infrastructure to maintain its edge over Google-parent Alphabet and Amazon.com. As part of the deal on Wednesday, Lumen will tap the tech giant’s Azure cloud services to cut costs.