- Microsoft already seeing high cloud demand from AI developers
- Alphabet misses cloud revenue expectations
The concern going into this earnings season for the big technology companies was that investors were expecting too much too soon from artificial intelligence (AI). Valuations have increased on the promise of the technology, but companies have urged patience from the market.
It was therefore positively surprising that Microsoft (US:MSFT) immediately saw an AI-linked sales hike. In the three months to 30 September, the cloud computing business Azure grew 29 per cent year-on-year. This was an acceleration from 26 per cent last quarter and was ahead of the Factset broker expectation of 26 per cent.