Microsoft Kembali Expansion For Artificial Intelligence Business Alami Peningkatan Pendapatan

Microsoft plans aggressive spending to meet demand for its artificial intelligence services (photo: dock. pexels)

JAKARTA - On Tuesday, July 25, Microsoft planned an aggressive spending to meet demand for its artificial intelligence services after successfully surpassing Wall Street forecasts for revenue and profit in the fourth fiscal quarter.

Costs increased sharply as Microsoft built a new data center to support AI, and Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood said in a press conference with analysts that the company's capital expenditure would continue to increase every quarter until the end of fiscal 2024. Microsoft shares fell by about 4% in the post-session trade.

Wall Street is interested in how generative AI services can benefit Microsoft, which has excelled with investing in OpenAI, a popular ChatGPT service owner.

Microsoft is integrating AI into its own products, such as "Copilot" assistants for 30 US dollars (IDR 450 thousand) per month for Microsoft 365 services that can summarize a day's email into short updates. The company also aims to sell cloud computing services that other companies will use to build their own AI services.

Microsoft's quarterly results show massive spending on AI services preceding its commensurate revenue growth.

Despite Azure's sales growth slightly exceeded market expectations, its quarterly capital spending hit its top single-quarter total since at least fiscal 2016. The company competes with other cloud providers for limited supply from Nvidia Corp, whose graphics processing units are critical in creating AI products and services.

CFO Hood told analysts that although Microsoft spending increased in fiscal 2024, operating profit margins would slightly increase once adjusted to accounting rule changes. "The main focus here is being able to be aggressive in meeting demand curves," Hood said.

He stated that it would take time to earn money, and that Copilot is not ready to be released in general and the income from the product is likely to occur around the second half of fiscal 2024.

Microsoft projects Azure revenue growth of 25%-26% in fixed currencies for the fiscal first quarter, compared with estimates of 25.6% of Visible Alpha that do not match the foreign exchange rate.

For segments that include Azure, Microsoft projects a first-quarter revenue range with a midpoint of 23.45 billion US dollars (Rp352.3 trillion). Analysts estimate an average of 23.55 billion (Rp352.3 trillion), according to Refinitiv data.

Microsoft has now started to integrate AI functionality across its products such as Azure, Microsoft 365, GitHub, and several developer tools.