Microsoft says AI boom is driving cloud demand higher

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Microsoft reported double-digit gains in quarterly revenue and profit driven by strong demand for cloud computing services, providing evidence that its bet on artificial intelligence and rapidly escalating spending on data centres is starting to pay off.

Revenue for its fiscal first quarter rose 16 per cent from a year ago to $65.6bn, beating analysts’ expectations for $64.5bn, according to a filing on Wednesday. Net income increased 11 per cent to $24.7bn in the three months through to the end of September, exceeding the average estimate of $23.1bn.

“AI-driven transformation is changing work . . . across every role, function and business process,” said chief executive Satya Nadella. He said the company was “winning new customers as we help them apply our AI platforms”.

Revenue from Azure and associated cloud computing services also beat forecasts, climbing 33 per cent from a year ago.

Microsoft also provided additional disclosure for investors wary of its surging capital expenditures, which almost doubled from the same period a year ago. It said that AI services accounted for 12 percentage points of that growth, which includes customers running their custom AI models through Microsoft’s data centres, paying for OpenAI’s services via the Azure platform and using GitHub Copilot, an AI coding assistant.

The tech group has been one of the main beneficiaries of the mainstream adoption of AI. Surging demand for its Azure data centres and enthusiasm about its partnership with market leader OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, has propelled it to become the world’s third-most valuable public company, behind Apple and Nvidia.

Microsoft shares, which are up about 16 per cent year to date, were 0.6 per cent lower in after-hours trading.

Shares in Alphabet, the parent of its rival Google, rose 2.9 per cent after it posted similarly strong growth in its cloud business on Tuesday.

Microsoft is building its own in-house consumer AI products — known as Copilots and powered by ChatGPT models — under Mustafa Suleyman, who it poached from start-up Inflection. The company also invested $1.5bn in Abu Dhabi AI group G42 as part of an international expansion.

The surge in revenue has given Microsoft the capacity to continue spending vast amounts on building new data centres around the world, filling them with specialised graphics processing units, servers and networking equipment.

Capex was $20bn in the quarter, an increase from $19bn in the prior three months and a 78 per cent jump from the $11.2bn spent in the same period last year. Executives said this could continue to rise alongside customer demand for computing capacity.

Microsoft’s energy demands are now so high that it struck a deal to revive the mothballed US nuclear plant at Three Mile Island as it seeks new low-carbon power sources.

Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta all revealed massive increases in capex in the first six months of 2024, reaching a total of $106bn. On Tuesday Google said that its quarterly capex was $13.1bn — 62 per cent higher than the $8.1bn invested in 2023 — and forecast that it would surpass $50bn for full-year 2024.