GitHub's AI Surge Pushes Microsoft Into Amazon's Arms

Microsoft is adding AWS capacity to GitHub after AI-driven growth strained infrastructure and triggered a series of reliability issues.

Microsoft is turning to its biggest cloud rival, Amazon, to help address capacity issues on its GitHub coding platform following a series of AI-driven outages. GitHub, which Microsoft acquired for $7.5 billion in 2018, has seen a surge in usage tied to its Copilot AI assistant and other machine-learning features. The platform ran multiple service disruptions over the last year, including a prolonged outage in March that blocked developers from accessing code repositories.

Adding capacity from Amazon Web Services gives GitHub a second cloud provider alongside Microsoft’s own Azure. The move is unusual for Microsoft, which typically runs its flagship services on Azure and has positioned the cloud as a core growth engine alongside AI. GitHub is the world’s largest code-hosting platform, with more than 100 million developers and over 400 million pull requests in 2024.

Microsoft said the AWS integration will provide immediate scaling for GitHub’s compute and storage workloads. The company did not disclose the size of the AWS deployment or the financial terms. A Microsoft spokesperson said the arrangement reflects GitHub’s need for “rapid, flexible infrastructure expansion” to meet demand that has outpaced internal capacity planning.

Private equity firms have held talks about a potential bid for parts of the company, though Microsoft has not signaled interest in a sale. Any partial divestiture would face regulatory scrutiny, given the platform’s market position.

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