Morning NewsMicrosoft Touts AI as Cloud Demand Cools
Microsoft’s quarterly sales growth slowed amid sluggish corporate demand even as excitement around artificial intelligence bolstered its business. The tech titan on Tuesday said that revenue in the quarter through June, the last in its fiscal year, rose 8% to $56.2 billion, edging out analysts’ expectations. That was down from growth of 12% a year earlier. The deceleration was stark in the cloud-computing business - the engine of Microsoft’s growth for years - which recently has suffered as tech customers have pulled back spending. Revenue for its Azure and other cloud services rose 26% in the latest quarter, still rapid by many measures but sharply slower than the 40% clip a year earlier and the growth rates of 50% or more that it posted in boom times. Microsoft, among the first big tech companies to report quarterly results, has had a mixed year. Like other tech giants, it has cut staff and other costs as demand for digital services ebbing after years of red-hot growth when work and life shifted online during the pandemic.