Microsoft Reports Rising Revenues as A.I. Investments Bear Fruit

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Microsoft gave more signs on Thursday that its hefty investments in artificial intelligence were beginning to bear fruit, as it reported a 17 percent jump in revenue and a 20 percent increase in profit for the first three months of the year. Revenue was $61.9 billion, up from $52.9 billion a year earlier. Profit hit $21.9 billion, up from $18.3 billion. The results beat Wall Street’s expectations. A year after Microsoft began its push to put A.I. into everything it does, the company said sales of its flagship cloud computing product, Azure, had grown 31 percent. That included seven percentage points from its generative A.I. services, which are primarily selling access to technology developed by its partner, OpenAI. In recent quarters, Microsoft’s A.I. push has helped it gain market share from Amazon, the leading cloud services provider. In January, the company said 53,000 customers were using its cloud A.I. services, with a third of them new to Azure.