Dhaka, April 10 -- Microsoft has announced it is "slowing or pausing" certain data centre construction projects, including a $1 billion development in Ohio, amid signals that the surge in demand for artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure may be levelling off.

The company confirmed it is halting early-phase work on rural sites it owns in Licking County, near Columbus, Ohio. Two of the three properties will now be retained for agricultural use, AP reports.

"In recent years, demand for our cloud and AI services grew more than we could have ever anticipated and to meet this opportunity, we began executing the largest and most ambitious infrastructure scaling project in our history," said Noelle Walsh, Microsoft's president of cloud ope...