Microsoft missed expectations for growth in its cloud division last quarter. (archive image)
Keystone
Microsoft is one of the winners of the AI boom so far. However, the company is not keeping up with its cloud capacities.
Keystone-SDA
30.01.2025, 08:26
SDA
Microsoft failed to meet the stock market's expectations for growth in its cloud division last quarter. The software group is experiencing capacity bottlenecks, as a result of which customer demand for services with artificial intelligence cannot be fully met. This will also be felt in the current financial year, said CFO Amy Hood.
Revenue in the cloud business rose by 21 percent year-on-year to 40.9 billion dollars. Analysts had expected an average of 41.1 billion dollars. The share price fell by more than four percent in US after-hours trading.
In the three months to the end of December, Group turnover increased by twelve percent to 69.6 billion dollars (63.0 billion Swiss francs). Profit rose by ten percent to 24.1 billion dollars. In operational terms, the Group earned almost 32 billion dollars, 17 percent more than a year ago.
80 billion dollars for AI training
Capital investments amounted to 22.6 billion dollars, roughly twice as high as a year ago. Microsoft plans to spend a total of 80 billion dollars on expanding its infrastructure for training and operating software with artificial intelligence (AI) in the financial year to the end of June.
Group CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that Microsoft and the ChatGPT developer OpenAI had achieved significant efficiency gains in AI as partners. Recently, the Chinese AI software DeepSeek had shocked US companies because it was allegedly developed with very little effort.
Nadella admitted DeepSeek had "some real innovations" that would be widely used in the future. At the same time, Microsoft and OpenAI had previously begun investigations into whether DeepSeek had been developed with unauthorized access to technology from the inventor of ChatGPT, according to media reports.