Microsoft forecast on Wednesday a record $30 billion in capital spending for the current fiscal first quarter, after booming sales in its Azure cloud computing business showcased the growing returns on its massive bets on artificial intelligence.

Microsoft Corp. said it will spend more than $30 billion in the current quarter to build out the data centers powering its artificial intelligence services.

Shares in the software giant rose 7.3 percent to $551 in after-hours trading as investors anticipate greater artificial intelligence offerings from the Azure cloud-computing business.

Shares of Microsoft spiked Thursday following blowout quarterly results, lifting the tech giant into the previously unprecedented $4 trillion club along with Nvidia, another artificial intelligence standout.

And both Meta and Microsoft were already on track to spend more than 30% of this year’s revenue on capital expenditures, compared with about 15% to 20% historically. Those outlays were already beginning to look like mere table stakes after Google parent Alphabet used its report last week to bump up its own capex spending plans for this year to $85 billion.