The global push towards greater AI acceptance has seen a big move towards cloud computing, with the knock-on effect of making Microsoft’s latets financial results very positive.
An 18% increase saw the company’s overall revenue climb to $62 billion in the three months that ended December 31 2023 - jmore than both Microsoft and analysts had expected.
A large part of the company’s success has been attributed to the $33.7 billion revenue posted by Microsoft Cloud, marking a 24% year-on-year increase. Last quarter, Microsoft Cloud accounted for more than half of the company’s entire revenue.
Microsoft Cloud continues to grow
In the three months prior, Microsoft Cloud revenue sat at $31.8 billion, marking an increase of nearly $2 billion in the space of one quarter. In previous quarters, it was $30.3 billion, $28.5 billion, $27.1 billion, and $25.7 billion, illustrating a steady and continued growth for the business.
Microsoft Cloud revenue has grown by around $6.6 billion since the company confirmed that it would invest an undisclosed multibillion-dollar amount into OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT and the one that lays the foundation for many of the generative AI solutions now available through Microsoft.
CEO Satya Nadella summarized the company’s progress in this area: “We’ve moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale.”
Nadella added: “By infusing AI across every layer of our tech stack, we’re winning new customers and helping drive new benefits and productivity gains across every sector.”
Moreover, Azure and other cloud services saw a considerable 30% increase in revenue, while Office Consumer products and cloud services saw the smallest growth of all areas, at 5%. Revenue pulled in by Devices dropped by an alarming 9%.
Looking ahead, it’s clear that Microsoft hedges its bets more on business cloud services, and the future of generative AI for the company looks to be extensive.
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