British telecommunications giant Vodafone has reached a 10-year partnership with Microsoft to provide generative AI, digital, enterprise, and cloud services to over 300 million business and consumer users in the European and African markets. Vodafone will invest $1.5 billion to develop customer-centric artificial intelligence using Microsoft's Azure OpenAI and Copilot technologies, and will replace physical data centers with cheaper and scalable Azure cloud services. Microsoft will become an equity investor in the Internet of Things (IoT) platform managed by Vodafone, which will be spun off as an independent business in April 2024.