Microsoft reports rising revenues as investments in artificial intelligence pay off
Microsoft gave further signs on Thursday that its heavy investments in artificial intelligence were starting to pay off, reporting a 17% increase in revenue and a 20% increase in profits for the first three months of the year.Revenue was $61.9 billion, up from $52.9 billion a year earlier. Profit reached $21.9 billion, up from $18.3 billion. The results exceeded Wall Street's expectations.A year after Microsoft began pushing to put artificial intelligence into everything it does, the company said sales of its flagship cloud computing product, Azure, grew 31%. That included seven percentage points from its generative artificial intelligence services, which primarily sell access to technology developed by its partner OpenAI.In recent quarters, Microsoft's AI push has helped it gai...