By MICHELLE CHAPMAN

Microsoft has entered into a $9.7 billion cloud services contract with artificial intelligence cloud service provider IREN that will give it access to some of Nvidia’s chips.

The five-year deal, which includes a 20% prepayment, will help Microsoft as it looks to keep up with AI demand. Last week the software maker reported its quarterly sales grew 18% to $77.7 billion, beating Wall Street expectations while also surprising some investors with the huge amounts of money it is spending to expand its cloud computing infrastructure and address the growing need for AI tools.

Microsoft spent nearly $35 billion in the July-September quarter on capital expenditures to support AI and cloud demand, nearly half of that on computer chips and much of the rest related to data cen

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