Text/Yang Jianyong

In the fiscal year 2026, Microsoft's revenue soared to $331.8 billion, marking an 18% year-over-year increase. Its net profit reached $133.7 billion (approximately RMB 900 billion), up by 31% from the previous year.

Notably, Azure's revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, reflecting a remarkable 41% year-over-year growth. This achievement elevated Azure's revenue contribution to 30% of Microsoft's total, underscoring the robust market demand for artificial intelligence solutions.

It is worth highlighting that Microsoft 365 Copilot has garnered over 30 million paid subscriptions, a testament to the strong market appetite for AI-driven office assistants. Simultaneously, as large-scale model technologies continue to evolve and breakthrough, AI applications have transitioned from simple question-and-answer formats to sophisticated AI Agent intelligence. This shift is fundamentally reshaping the logic and efficiency of enterprise management from the ground up.

Clearly, in the era of generative AI, Microsoft has secured a favorable position in both the artificial intelligence and cloud services markets. By investing in OpenAI, a highly sought-after AI large model company, and integrating deeply with its technologies, Microsoft's cloud business has accumulated undelivered orders totaling $678 billion, representing an 81% year-over-year surge.

Certainly, Microsoft's cloud business's commercial remaining performance obligations have witnessed an 80% year-over-year spike, largely attributable to its seamless integration with OpenAI. Nearly half of this growth can be attributed to OpenAI's contributions, a factor that may raise some market concerns.

Overall, one of the pivotal reasons behind Microsoft's success as a major winner in the generative AI era is its strategic investment in OpenAI and the subsequent construction of Azure AI infrastructure. This move has enabled Microsoft to achieve comprehensive service coverage across IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS layers.

Consequently, Azure's market share continues to climb, further cementing its position as the world's second-largest public cloud provider and gradually closing the gap with Amazon.

In the global cloud services market, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google collectively command over 60% of the public cloud market share. Among them, Microsoft Azure holds a 21% stake. Generative AI large models have emerged as a key driver of cloud revenue growth, propelling Microsoft Azure to continuously expand its market presence.

The strong revenue performance and Azure's impressive cloud business results have triggered an 8.88% surge in Microsoft's stock price in after-hours trading, with its market value poised to breach the $3 trillion threshold once again.

Ultimately, generative AI stands as the core driving force behind the growth of the global cloud services market. Leveraging its rich AI capabilities and robust computing infrastructure, Microsoft is empowering innovation across diverse industries.

Meanwhile, as models become increasingly sophisticated, tokens become more affordable, and tools become more abundant, everyone can now have their own Copilot and Agent. In this context, it is poised to fuel revenue growth for cloud computing companies and unlock their full growth potential.