Microsoft benefited greatly from demand for its cloud services in the past quarter. Turnover from this branch rose faster than overall turnover and accounted for the majority of all revenues of the tech group. Applications in the field of artificial intelligence (AI) also yielded more.
Microsoft’s quarterly turnover increased by 17 percent year on year to almost 62 billion dollars, equivalent to more than 57 billion euros. Profits increased by 20 percent to almost $22 billion.
Cloud services accounted for more than $35 billion of revenue, an increase of 21 percent compared to the same period last year. Cloud services that allow business customers to build their own AI applications on OpenAI technology also boosted demand for Microsoft’s Azure offering. Azure revenues rose 31 percent last quarter.
OpenAI is the company behind the popular chatbot ChatGPT. Microsoft has been investing in the AI company for years, totaling around $13 billion. Microsoft owns 49 percent of the shares in OpenAI.