In spite of (or perhaps more accurately because of) recent mass layoffs at Microsoft, the company is now valued at $4 trillion, only the second company to hit that valuation on the stock market after Nvidia.
As we enter the dog days of summer, many companies are reporting their earnings for the previous quarter. Microsoft is among them and according to its latest earnings call, the tech giant hauled in a Scrooge McDuck-esque $27.2 billion in net income, up 24% from the same period last year.
And it can all largely be blamed on AI and Azure, Microsoft's cloud computing platform where the company is heavily investing in AI while it remains the tech industry's obsession du jour.
"Cloud and AI is the driving force of business transformation across every industry and sector," CEO Satya Nadella said in the report. "We’re innovating across the tech stack to help customers adapt and grow in this new era, and this year, Azure surpassed $75 billion in revenue, up 34 percent, driven by growth across all workloads."
These are numbers and business wins that won't be appealing to the more than 9,000 people that were laid off by Microsoft in the last month across multiple sectors of the business.
Especially after Nadella's inane comments about AI and the layoffs.
"This is the enigma of success in an industry that has no franchise value. Progress isn’t linear. It’s dynamic, sometimes dissonant, and always demanding," Nadella wrote in a company blog. "But it’s also a new opportunity for us to shape, lead through, and have greater impact than ever before."
According to the financials revenue was up for Microsoft across the board, including in its Xbox, Windows, Microsoft 365 and LinkedIn divisions—just not as much as Azure cloud and AI.
As GamesRadar reports, the company had a choice to cut about four percent of its workforce or reduce some spending on AI. It's obvious which way that axe fell, now that Microsoft has laid off roughly 9,000 people in the last few months and roughly 15,000 so far this year.
Now, investors who don't even work for the company are reaping the profits as Microsoft's AI bet appears to have paid off financially—at least in the short term.
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