Azure, Microsoft’s core cloud platform, delivered 43% revenue growth in the fiscal fourth quarter, its fastest pace since early 2022 and ahead of about 40% expected by analysts tracked by Visible Alpha. Overall company revenue climbed 18% to USD90 billion, beating projections as cloud and AI products pulled more weight in the mix.
Over the past year, Azure revenue crossed the USD100 billion threshold for the first time, a major milestone in the scale of Microsoft’s cloud operations.
AI-linked products added another layer of strength. Microsoft 365 Copilot, the company’s AI assistant for productivity apps, reached more than 30 million paid seats, up from roughly 20 million just three months earlier.
Rapid adoption shows how quickly AI is being embedded into everyday workplace software, boosting both usage and pricing power. Surging demand also explains why Microsoft has been willing to pour so much cash into data centres, chips and networking to support AI workloads.
Spending is ramping aggressively to keep that growth going. Capital expenditure jumped about 70% in the quarter to USD41 billion, driven by heavy investment in AI-ready infrastructure.
Earlier this year, Microsoft projected a massive USD190 billion in capital spending across the 2024 calendar year, showing how central AI and cloud are to its strategy. The latest results indicate investors are comfortable with those outlays as long as Azure and AI subscriptions keep scaling at this pace.
