Microsoft posted strong results for its quarterly earnings on Wednesday, beating expectations and showing strong growth in its cloud computing platform and a boost in paid AI users. The Redmond, Washington company earned US$90 billion, or US$4.81 per share, in the April-June quarter. That is up 18 per cent from the same period a year earlier. Analysts surveyed by FactSet Research had expected the company to earn US$4.24 per share on revenue of US$87.62 billion this quarter.

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…