Microsoft turns to AWS to keep GitHub running amid AI overload

Microsoft Turns to AWS to Handle GitHub’s AI-Driven Capacity Crisis

Microsoft has begun purchasing cloud capacity from rival Amazon Web Services to keep its GitHub platform running as AI-powered coding tools overwhelm its infrastructure, according to a Business Insider report citing two people familiar with the plans. The move comes despite Microsoft’s ongoing effort to migrate GitHub entirely onto its own Azure cloud platform.byteiota

AI Agents Push GitHub Past Its Limits

The decision reflects the extraordinary strain AI coding agents have placed on GitHub’s systems in 2026. According to GitHub’s CTO Vlad Fedorov, the platform has experienced roughly a 3.5x increase in load over two years, driven largely by autonomous coding tools that commit code around the clock. Claude Code alone now accounts for 2.6 million commits per week, and AI agent pull requests surged from 4 million per month in September 2025 to 17 million by March 2026.pragmaticengineer

The platform suffered 19 service-degrading incidents across April and May, with third-party monitoring showing availability as low as 85% over a 90-day period. The crisis prompted Mitchell Hashimoto, founder of HashiCorp and creator of Ghostty, to publicly leave GitHub in frustration, writing: “This is no longer a place for serious work if it just blocks you out for hours per day, every day”.pragmaticengineer

Azure Migration Outpaced by Demand

GitHub began migrating from its own data centers to Azure in October 2025, a project initially expected to take 12 months. But the AI surge outpaced the migration timeline. GitHub’s infrastructure team had planned for a 10x capacity expansion in October 2025; by February 2026, they realized they needed to design for 30x current scale.techbuzz

Microsoft has framed the AWS addition as part of a broader multi-cloud strategy. A company statement said it is “both accelerating our move to Azure and continuing to explore a multi-cloud strategy” to support growth. GitHub’s SVP Jakub Oleksy noted that 40 percent of monolith traffic now runs on Azure, up from 8 percent in February.byteiota

A Pragmatic Concession

The arrangement underscores the practical limits of corporate cloud loyalty when reliability is at stake. GitHub has declared its operational priorities as “availability first, then capacity, then new features,” leaning on AWS for overflow while it races to complete the Azure migration. The platform also shifted to usage-based billing on June 1 and paused new individual plan sign-ups as it rebalances capacity for existing users.directionsonmicrosoft