The AI ​​fires Microsoft’s income at the expense of huge investments. And now China threatens its strategy

Microsoft has presented Its quarterly resultsand thanks to them we already know what he won in 2024 thanks to the AI: 13,000 million dollars. Of course, it is also investing 22.6 billion dollars in infrastructure … each quarter.

As if that were not enough, you also have to deal with the threat of Chinese innovation.

Why is it important. The figures leave a clear reading: the Financial Equation of AI remains very complex. Generating interesting income – the current ones are already, grow 175% year -on -year – requires huge infrastructure investments. And now Chinese innovation threatens to leave a part of that investment obsolete.

The context. Microsoft dominates the business market thanks to its early alliance with Openai, but Deepseek’s irruptionwhich has developed more efficient and cheap models, and open source, has caused a small earthquake in the sector.

Microsoft is in a race against time: it needs to monetize its great investment in AI as soon as possible, but now it receives increasing competitive pressure from China.

The figures:

• 13,000 million dollars (annualized) in revenue per year.
• 22.6 billion dollars invested per quarter in infrastructure.
• 31% Azure growth, below expectations.
• 24,110 million dollars of quarterly net profit, 10% more interannual. Exceeded expectations.

Marking Agenda. The consolidation of Microsoft as a leader in corporate AI is thanks to Copilot, its Microsoft 365 assistantwhich already has more than 160,000 companies using it … and have created more than 400,000 custom agents, according to the figures published by the company.

Microsoft is in full transition to a model where AI is integrated into all its business lines:

• Windows will incorporate AI capacities in 15% of high -end laptops.
• LinkedIn uses AI to improve its hiring platform.
• Xbox Cloud Gaming continues to break records with 140 million hours transmitted.
• Github co -ilot It has more than 150 million active developers.

And the AI ​​stars in a striking contrast in the company’s accounts: while Azure’s income, the great winner of the Nadella era, are growing slower than expected, new business lines based on AI are growing explosively: 157%.

Deepen. One of the questions that leave these results is whether Microsoft will be able to maintain this level of investment if Chinese efficiency advances force a price war in AI services.

Microsoft defends its strategy arguing that the demand for AI will continue to grow exponentially as the costs are reduced, thus compensating the current investments. The question is whether investors share that optimism.

Outstanding image | Microsoft

In Xataka | I have tried Deepseek on the web and in my Mac. Chatgpt, Claude and Gemini have a problem