Microsoft’s shares surged 7% Wednesday after the company announced its quarterly earnings, revealing that its cloud computing service Azure had seen a 27% growth in the first quarter of 2023. This was fuelled by developing their artificial intelligence (AI) offering, which was praised by their CEO Satya Nadella during a post-earnings conference call.
Microsoft strengthened their AI capabilities with a wider partnership with OpenAI and a new version of their search engine Bing powered by the intelligent language tool ChatGPT. This in turn helped to boost sales of their cloud business, leading to the $140 billion increase in the company’s market capitalization.
The announcement of their strong performance put Microsoft in a favourable position against key competitors – Google’s parent Alphabet, which traded flat after releasing their own results, and Amazon, which rose 2% prior to the release of their first-quarter earnings. However, their progress was hindered by the UK’s competition regulator blocking the tech giant’s $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard, the videogame developer behind the hit game series “Call of Duty”.
Microsoft is a multinational technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington. The company is renowned for producing an array of products and services, including software, computer hardware, consumer electronics, and even video games. It is one of the largest tech companies in the world and consistently ranks amongst the highest in terms of market capitalization.
Satya Nadella is the current CEO of Microsoft and has held the position since 2014. Prior to this, he was Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise Group. He is a renowned technology leader and has been primarily responsible for driving Microsoft’s foray into AI technology. Nadella has also played an instrumental role in Microsoft’s success over the course of his career.
