Microsoft turns to Amazon to keep GitHub running amid intensifying AI boom

Microsoft is reportedly relying on Amazon to ease GitHub capacity issues after AI-led outages. The move shows how the scramble for compute power is reshaping rivalries across the cloud market.

In Short

• Microsoft reportedly leans on Amazon as AI demand strains GitHub
• AI coding tools are flooding GitHub with record amounts of code
• The AI boom is forcing even fierce rivals to collaborate

The AI boom is creating strange new alliances. Just days after reports emerged that SpaceX had struck massive computing deals with Google and Anthropic, Microsoft is now reportedly turning to one of its biggest rivals, Amazon, to help keep GitHub running smoothly. The reason is simple: there just isn't enough computing power to go around. Earlier this month, SpaceX and Google disclosed a new deal under which Google will pay SpaceX $920 million a month for AI compute capacity from October 2026 to June 2029. SpaceX has also signed a similar deal with Anthropic.

The scramble for computing power, however, is no longer limited to AI companies building chatbots and large language models. It is now affecting some of the internet's most popular services as well.

According to a Business Insider report, Microsoft is leaning on Amazon to address capacity issues on GitHub, its coding platform, after a series of AI-driven outages.

AI coding boom floods GitHub

The problem stems from the rapid rise of AI coding tools. These tools have made it easier for developers to write software, leading to an explosion in the amount of code being created. That surge has flooded GitHub with new projects and code updates, putting immense pressure on the platform's computing resources.

GitHub, which Microsoft acquired in 2018, is one of the world's most popular platforms for developers to store and manage code and collaborate on projects.

As an independent company, GitHub mostly operated its own data centres. Microsoft, however, had planned to move the coding platform entirely to its Azure cloud service by 2027. That plan is now facing an unexpected challenge: demand.

Code growth is exploding

GitHub commits, records of code changes that serve as a proxy for development activity, are on pace to reach 14 billion in 2026, up from 1 billion in 2025, Chief Operating Officer Kyle Daigle wrote on X in April. That extraordinary growth has pushed GitHub's infrastructure to its limits.

"The incredible spike in agentic development that began late last year has tested our infrastructure's limits," a Microsoft spokesperson told Business Insider.

To cope with the surge, Microsoft is "both accelerating our move to Azure and continuing to explore a multi-cloud strategy to ensure we have the future capacity, compute elasticity and horizontal scale required to support continued growth," the spokesperson added.

Why this deal is surprising

The reported move is notable because Microsoft and Amazon are fierce rivals in the cloud computing market. Microsoft's Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have spent years battling for market share, competing for the same enterprise customers and AI workloads.

A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed to Business Insider that GitHub is tapping multiple cloud providers but declined to comment on any specific involvement by Amazon. Still, the reported partnership highlights a new reality emerging in the AI era. Companies that compete fiercely in one area may still have to work together if they want enough computing power to meet soaring demand.

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