Microsoft revenue up 18% after ‘infusing AI’ across tech stack

Microsoft and Alphabet report earnings with significant advancements in AI and cloud computing and plans to push forward on AI trends in 2024.

The Big Tech giants Microsoft and Alphabet – the parent company of Google – released earnings on Jan. 30 for the previous quarter, with highlights including developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and cloud computing, among others. 

Over the last year, AI was one of the most prominent topics in the tech industry, with a global market size reaching $196.6 billion in 2023. Microsoft and Google were among the leaders in the AI development space in 2023, both releasing their own high-level chatbots.

Microsoft saw accelerated sales at the end of the year, with its AI tools being a major factor. According to the report, the company revenue rose 18% year-on-year from September to December to more than $60 billion.

In the Q4 earnings call Satya Nadella, the chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft, commented on Microsoft’s AI developments saying:

“We’ve moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale. By infusing AI across every layer of our tech stack, we’re winning new customers and helping drive new benefits and productivity gains across every sector.”

These end-of-the-year results came as Microsoft took the lead as the world’s most valuable public company with a $3 trillion value, surpassing Apple.

Along with its AI offerings, Microsoft’s sales of its cloud computing service of Azure rose 30% year-on-year, which was a better result than predicted by industry analysts. The company’s overall profits for Q4 were up 33% year-on-year, coming in at $21.9 billion. 

Microsoft entered 2024 launching the pro-version of its AI chatbot Copilot, which includes the capabilities to create custom GPTs and Office integration. However, it also entered the new year caught in a major copyright lawsuit against the New York Times, along with OpenAI.

Cointelegraph reached out to Microsoft for additional information.

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Alphabet similarly leaned on its AI integrations as a key factor in its Q4 success. The CEO of the company Sundar Pichai said he’s pleased with the strength of Google Search, and growth from YouTube and Cloud.

“Each of these is already benefiting from our AI investments and innovation. As we enter the Gemini era, the best is yet to come.”

It reported a consolidated revenue of $86 billion for Q4, which is up 13% year-over-year.

Ruth Porat, the president and chief investment officer said Alphabet is committed to “durably re-engineer our cost base” to invest and support new growth opportunities.

Already, Google started the year by outlining a plan for cutting jobs, in exchange for reaching its ambitious goals in areas including AI. In January 2023, it announced a cut of 6% to its global workforce and by September 2023, the company had laid off 182,381 employees globally. 

Nonetheless, Google started the year with the release of a new realistic AI text-to-video generator called “Lumiere,” which uses a time-space diffusion model to transform text and images into realistic AI-generated videos with on-demand editing capabilities.