Microsoft did better than expected: AI pushed its first quarter

Microsoft On Tuesday, it posted slightly better-than-expected results for the first quarter of the year, boosted by its AI-powered cloud business.

Between January and March, the company’s third accounting quarter and the first of the year, Microsoft reported a 7 percent increase in revenue over the same quarter last year, to $52.8 billion.

Microsoft has taken a clear lead among the tech giants since the November launch of ChatGPT, the generative AI interface (capable of creating on-demand content in a common language), devised by California start-up OpenAI, on which has invested heavily.

The company of Redmond (State of Washington). has already integrated ChatGPT into its Bing search enginewhich has relaunched this portal so far unable to compete with Google.

Microsoft intends to use ChatGPT technology in all its products. “The world’s most advanced AI models are usable with the most universal interface, the common language, and will usher in a new era of computing,” said the president of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, mentioned in a statement published on Tuesday.

A sign of the boost ChatGPT has given the group, its revenues from cloud or remote computing, which uses artificial intelligence, have increased 22% in one year to $28.5 billion and account for more than half of the company’s revenue. company (54%).

In the first quarter, Microsoft’s earnings reached $18.3 billion, up 9.4% from the same quarter last year. Per share, it was $2.45, well above the $2.24 expected by analysts. In the post-shutdown email to Wall Street, the company’s shares rose 4.79%.

Wall Street on the rise

Wall Street closed Wednesday in the red and the Dow Jones Industrials, its leading indicator, fell 0.68% as investors scan the latest company results.

At the close of business, the Dow Jones was in decline 33,301 units and the selective S&P 500 subtracted 0.38% to 4,055 points.

For its part, the Nasdaq Market Composite Index, in which major technology companies are traded, rose 0.47% to 11,854 integers.

Over the course of the day, investors’ concerns regarding the Prima Repubblica bank were stronger than the enthusiasm that the good results of the technology companies were able to arouse.

And is that the First Republic fell by 29.45% this Wednesday, after falling by almost 50% on Tuesday. The bank announced on Monday that its deposits fell 40%, to $104.5 billion, in the first quarter of the year. For its part, Microsoft rose more than 7% to trade at its highest point in more than a year later, surpassing Wall Street. expectations in its final quarter results.

Amazon rose 2.35% on Thursday’s report, while Alphabet fell 0.13% as Google’s parent company posted better-than-expected earnings but said revenue grew only by 3% over the same period a year ago.

After the close of the Stock Exchange, it will be Meta (which rises by 0.89%) to announce its last quarter.

The only sector to finish in the green was technology, up 1.73%, while the biggest losses were utilities and industry, which fell 2.37% and 1% respectively. ‘1.87.