Microsoft’s Q4 profits soar on AI-driven cloud growth

In the fourth quarter of 2023, Microsoft witnessed a remarkable 33% surge in its net income, reaching $21.9 billion, marking its strongest quarterly growth in over two years.

Fueled by increasing interest in artificial intelligence (AI), the Azure cloud business achieved an impressive 30% expansion, beating analysts predictions.

Strategic partnerships with OpenAI for innovations like ChatGPT saw Microsoft’s shares soar nearly 70% in the past year, catapulting its market capitalization beyond $3 trillion.

Despite facing challenges, including layoffs and varying success with AI tools, the tech giant projects overall sales between $60 billion and $61 billion for the current quarter.

But Google ad sales fall short of Wall Street expectations
Google recorded $65.5 billion of total advertising sales, an increase of 11% from the previous year. But it was below Wall Street’s expectations, causing shares to drop over 5% in after-hours trading yesterday.

The search engine’s disappointing ad sales affect parent company Alphabet despite its overall revenue climbing 13% to $86.3 billion last quarter.

Alphabet’s full-year revenue reached $307.4 billion, showing an 8.7% increase. 

Google-owned YouTube’s advertising revenue rose to $9.2 billion, and annual subscription revenue reached an impressive $15 billion.