Microsoft’s push into artificial intelligence is beginning to show stronger returns, with the company reporting a sharp rise in cloud revenue and a growing base of paid AI users in its latest quarterly results.

Microsoft’s Azure grew 43% and passed $100bn for the year, its backlog hit $678bn, and the stock rose 2%. But AI capital spending keeps climbing.

July 29 : Microsoft topped Wall Street estimates for quarterly cloud revenue growth on Wednesday, a sign its massive spending on AI infrastructure was paying off as capacity…