Microsoft On Wednesday, the annual turnover for its flagship -Azure Cloud Computing platform said by 75 billion US dollars, which had an increase of 34% compared to the previous year.
The Azure Cloud Business is a heart of the efforts of Microsoft to shift its focus on artificial intelligence, but by Wednesday the company had not announced how much money it earns.
The revelation came at the end of the year of the software giant, one who also showed an increase in the company’s quarterly profit by 24%, which exceeded the expectations of Wall Street and the investors were careful with regard to Microsoft in relation to the ongoing construction of expensive new data centers, which were necessary to combat cloud computing and AI demand.
“We continue to scale our own data center capacity faster than any other competitor,” said CEO Satya Nadella on an investor call and boasted that the company now has more than 400 extensive facilities on six continents.
The profit of the fiscal year in the fourth quarter of Microsoft was $ 34.3 billion or $ 3.65 per share and exceeded the analyst expectations for USD 3.37 per share.
In the April-Juni period, it generated sales of $ 76.4 billion by 18%compared to the previous year. Analysts questioned by Factset Research searched for income of 73.86 billion dollars.
Microsoft launched Azure more than a decade ago, but the service has increasingly intertwined with its AI ambitions, since the company wants to sell its AI chat bot and other tools to large business customers that are also dependent on its core online services.
It still goes behind his main competitor, Amazon Web services that achieved sales of 107.6 billion US dollars for the financial year ended in December.
The structure of the infrastructure for the power supply of cloud and AI technology is expensive, and Microsoft was looking for savings elsewhere. It announced Leastings of around 15,000 workers Even if his profits have increased.
Nadella informed the employees last week that the layoffs “heavily burdened him”, but also positioned them as an opportunity to reinterpret the company’s mission for a AI era.
Nevertheless, the total staffing numbers have not changed. The company entered 228,000 full -time employees on June 30, just like a year ago, although a little more of them are based in the USA and are less of them in product support roles or consulting services.
Promising of a slim approach was welcomed in Wall Street, especially since Microsoft and other tech giants try to justify large amounts of capital expenditure in order to pay the data centers, chips and other components that are necessary to power the AI technology.
Google After publishing his profits last week, it would increase its budget for investment expenditure by another 10 to 85 billion US dollars. Amy Hood, Chief Financial Officer from Microsoft, said she expects the capital expenditure for the quarter in July september to be $ 30 billion.
Microsoft did not announce on Wednesday to what extent the US tariffs are affected on sales, but in his annual report, tariffs are listed under a number of risks from which the company is exposed.
“Increased geopolitical instabilities and the change in the priorities of the US administration create an unpredictable trade landscape,” said the company. It is also said that the “volatility of the US tariffs has triggered economic uncertainty and could affect the competitiveness of the cloud and equipment.”
