Brijesh Desai 
Microsoft AWS Help GitHub Outages: Microsoft turns to cloud rival Amazon Web Services (AWS) to address GitHub outages caused by AI-driven capacity surge. 2026 has seen dozens of major GitHub outages. GitHub adding AWS capacity while still planning Azure migration by 2027. Multi-cloud strategy for now.
Microsoft is reportedly turning to its biggest cloud rival, Amazon Web Services (AWS), to help address capacity issues on its GitHub coding platform following a series of AI-driven outages in 2026, according to two people familiar with the plans.
The partnership is ironic given that Microsoft Azure and AWS are fierce competitors in the cloud computing market, with Microsoft investing $190 billion in new data centers by 2026 to compete with AWS.
What’s Happening: The Core Problem
A Microsoft spokesperson confirmed GitHub is tapping multiple cloud providers but declined to comment on AWS involvement specifically.
Why GitHub Is Having Outages
The Root Cause: AI-Driven Development Boom
AI coding tools are making developers more productive, which means they’re adding massive amounts of code to GitHub, overwhelming its servers.
The Outage Timeline
The AWS Partnership: What’s Happening
Microsoft is leaning on Amazon to handle the surge because AWS has the infrastructure GitHub needs immediately.
Microsoft’s Long-Term Plan: Azure Migration
While using AWS as a temporary solution, Microsoft’s original plan remains:
The 50% Azure migration target by July 2026 is meant to help address scaling issues.
Why This Partnership Seems Paradoxical
The Irony:
Microsoft Azure and AWS are the biggest competitors in cloud computing, making this partnership unexpected.
Why It’s Happening:
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Immediate need — GitHub needs capacity NOW, not in 2027
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AWS infrastructure — AWS has reliable, global infrastructure at scale
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Service continuity — Ensure popular service doesn’tä¸æ– (stop), regardless of partner
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Multi-cloud strategy — Exploring multiple clouds for future capacity and elasticity
The main goal is ensuring popular services stay operational, and who provides the infrastructure is secondary.
GitHub’s History: Migration from AWS to Azure Outages
The Migration Story:
The outages started directly after Microsoft’s 2018 acquisition and are attributed to the migration from AWS to Azure. Now Microsoft is going back to AWS to fix the problems caused by the Azure migration.
Developer Community Reaction
Reddit & Hacker News Complaints:
Developers are frustrated with the frequency of outages in 2026.
Microsoft’s Official Response
Microsoft Spokesperson Quote:
“The incredible spike in agentic development that began late last year has tested our infrastructure’s limits. To meet this demand, 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.”
Key points:
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Confirmed multi-cloud strategy
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Declined to confirm AWS specifically
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Accelerating Azure migration
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“Multi-cloud strategy” for future capacity
AWS’s Response
Amazon Spokesperson Quote:
“Customers choose AWS because they need global infrastructure that performs reliably, securely, and efficiently at scale, and we’re committed to providing the best performance no matter the workload.”
Key points:
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Doesn’t comment on individual clients
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Emphasizes AWS reliability, security, efficiency at scale
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Committed to best performance regardless of workload
The Bottom Line
Microsoft is reportedly turning to AWS to address GitHub’s capacity issues caused by an AI-driven surge in agentic development activity that began late 2025. GitHub has suffered dozens of major outages in 2026, forcing Microsoft to add AWS computing capacity while still accelerating its Azure migration. The partnership is ironic since Azure and AWS are fierce cloud competitors, but Microsoft’s goal is ensuring GitHub stays operational regardless of provider. While planning to fully migrate to Azure by 2027 (with 50% traffic there by July 2026), Microsoft is using a multi-cloud strategy for now to handle the infrastructure demands. Microsoft’s $190 billion data center investment by 2026 should eventually reduce the need for AWS help.
Quick Summary
Microsoft turning to AWS to fix GitHub capacity issues caused by AI-driven agentic development surge (late 2025). GitHub suffered dozens of major outages in 2026, forcing Microsoft to add AWS computing capacity while still accelerating Azure migration. Partners: Azure vs AWS = fierce cloud competitors, partnership ironic but ensures service continuity. Original plan: fully migrate to Azure by 2027, 50% traffic on Azure by July 2026. Microsoft investing $190B in data centers by 2026. Outages started after Microsoft’s 2018 acquisition, attributed to AWS→Azure migration. Developers frustrated: “GitHub is down a lot lately”. Microsoft confirmed multi-cloud strategy, declined AWS confirmation.