Nosy Tarsee has overheard talk in tech supply circles that Microsoft and Amazon Web Services are quietly accelerating their exit out of China — faster than anyone expected.

According to people in the know, Microsoft has been nudging its suppliers to get ready for “out of China” production runs for its Surface laptops and data center servers as early as next year. 

Insiders say the plan extends down to the component and parts level, a rare and ambitious shift that could see the company’s new devices being entirely made outside China by 2026.

“It’s a wide scope — from parts to full assembly,” one supply chain executive whispered to Nikkei Asia. “Microsoft wants everything for new notebooks and servers done beyond China’s borders by 2026, if possible.”

The company, which ships roughly four million devices a year, has reportedly already moved a chunk of its server production abroad, a sensitive category given ongoing US–China tensions. 

One insider claims 80 percent of the materials for Microsoft’s servers are now sourced outside China, with the same push extending to Xbox consoles, though not yet at full scale.

Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services is said to be doing the same — digging even deeper into its component supply chain to reduce reliance on Chinese sources.

A supplier executive summed it up: “Moving assembly lines is easy. But shifting down to components — that’s radical. 2026 is a tight deadline. Let’s see if they can really pull it off.”

If the whispers are true, Big Tech’s quiet exodus from China’s manufacturing orbit may be moving from talk to full-blown execution, and whether the move will benefit the Philippines remains to be seen.