(Reuters) – Microsoft topped market estimates for quarterly revenue on Wednesday, boosted by steady demand for its cloud services as businesses ramped up spending on artificial-intelligence tools.
Shares of the tech giant rose more than 6% in extended trading.
The results are likely to ease concerns about a potential slowdown in AI demand, after some analysts pointed to canceled data center leases at Microsoft as a sign of excess capacity.
Rival Alphabet also posted strong results last week, as AI features integrated into Google Search attracted advertisers and fended off competition from startups like OpenAI, even as growth at its cloud division was hampered by supply shortages.
Microsoft, which has repeatedly said it remains capacity-constrained for AI workloads, reported growth of 33% in its Azure cloud business, beating estimates of 29.7%, according to Visible Alpha.
The Intelligent Cloud unit, which includes the Azure platform, reported revenue of $26.8 billion, up nearly 21% from last year and compared with expectations of $26.17 billion.
Microsoft has benefited from its tie-up with OpenAI, which uses Azure to develop, train and deploy its AI models. Surging usage of ChatGPT, which uses Microsoft’s infrastructure to come up with responses for user queries, has also helped Azure.
The company said revenue rose 13% to $70.1 billion in its fiscal third quarter, compared with analysts’ average estimate of $68.42 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.
(Reporting by Deborah Sophia in Bengaluru; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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