"We've built an AI business larger than some of our biggest franchises that took decades", says Microsoft CEO amid quarterly revenue report of USD 81.3 billion

Satya Nadella, Chairman and CEO of Microsoft, stated on X that the company is still in the beginning phases of AI diffusion and its broad impact on gross domestic product. He noted that Microsoft has already built an AI business larger than some of its biggest franchises that took decades to build. He noted that Microsoft's quarterly cloud revenue surpassed the USD 50 billion mark for the first time.

As per a release, the company saw its operating income rise by 21 per cent to USD 38.3 billion, while net income on a generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) basis reached USD 38.5 billion, marking a 60 per cent growth. Diluted earnings per share on a GAAP basis stood at USD 5.16.

"Microsoft Cloud revenue crossed USD 50 billion this quarter, reflecting the strong demand for our portfolio of services," said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft. She added that the company exceeded expectations across revenue, operating income, and earnings per share. Non-GAAP net income, which excludes the impact from investments in OpenAI, was reported at USD 30.9 billion, an increase of 23 per cent.

Nadella also highlighted that annual cloud revenue was USD 10 billion less than 10 years ago, attributing the current growth to expanding the total addressable market and execution. He further explained that, "The key metric we are optimizing for is tokens per watt and per dollar, which is all about increasing utilization and decreasing TCO using silicon, systems, and software."

As per Nadella, Microsoft achieved a 50 per cent increase in throughput for OpenAI inferencing, which powers its Copilot.

The company is also focusing on its new first-party systems, such as Maia 200, and its agent platform. Nadella stated that software is being rewritten in this platform shift, where agents are viewed as the new apps.

He confirmed that over 1,500 customers have used both Anthropic and OpenAI models on Foundry, with more than 250 customers on track to process over one trillion tokens on the platform this year.

Operational momentum was reported across various segments, with the Microsoft 365 Copilot reaching 15 million paid seats. GitHub Copilot subscribers rose 75 per cent year-over-year to 4.7 million, while healthcare documentation encounters increased over three times to 21 million.

Nadella said that the company feels confident in its ability to innovate and capture future opportunities as diffusion accelerates. (ANI)