Microsoft delivered strong fiscal fourth-quarter results that exceeded analyst expectations, with revenue growing 18% year-over-year to $90.0 billion, surpassing the $89.66 billion consensus according to LSEG surveys. Net income reached $35.77 billion, or $4.81 per share, compared to $27.23 billion, or $3.65 per share in the same quarter last year. The company's Intelligent Cloud segment featuring Azure posted $39.31 billion in revenue, up 31.6% year-over-year, surpassing the $38.16 billion consensus and accelerating to 43% growth at constant currency from 40% in the prior quarter. As reported by CNBC, Azure revenue for the full fiscal year exceeded $100 billion for the first time, up 41%, though it still trails Amazon Web Services while remaining larger than Alphabet's Google Cloud.
According to a partial internal transcript reviewed by CNBC, OpenAI told employees that annualized recurring revenue (ARR) in July surpassed the company's entire second quarter. Chief Financial Officer Sarah Friar shared this figure on Wednesday alongside board chair Bret Taylor during an employee meeting. The company credited this strong performance to the GPT-5.6 model series, enterprise agent ChatGPT Work, and rising adoption of the Codex coding tool. As reported by CNBC, the update comes as OpenAI is seeking to sustain growth amid intensified competition from rivals such as Anthropic and lower-cost open-weight AI models.
As reported by CNBC, Taylor acknowledged that Anthropic entered the year with strong momentum but noted that OpenAI had been playing catch-up in coding. However, he highlighted that Codex's expansion has been encouraging, with users who previously invested heavily in Claude Code now seeking alternatives. According to The Information, OpenAI's annualized revenue topped $25 billion at the end of February, while the company burned $3.7 billion in the first quarter against $5.7 billion in revenue. According to CNBC, the company is expanding its enterprise and developer customer base to generate the revenue needed to support its AI infrastructure investments.
According to CNBC, OpenAI is under pressure to justify its $852 billion valuation as it considers a potential initial public offering. The company has confidentially filed IPO documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission. OpenAI told investors in February that it plans to target roughly $600 billion in total compute spending by 2030. The company is in discussions with Nvidia for up to $250 billion in funding support to help finance plans to lease a large AI data centre in Ohio. As reported by CNBC, the latest internal message was aimed at reassuring employees about the company's business performance as it continues to expand its enterprise AI offerings.
The revenue disclosure comes as several major AI companies report quarterly results, with Microsoft closing its fiscal fourth quarter on June 30 with revenue of $90.0 billion, up 18%, and operating income climbing 18% to $40.6 billion. Meta reported revenue of $60.80 billion, beating analyst expectations of roughly $59.50 billion, representing a 28% increase from the previous year, though it missed earnings per share expectations of $7.14. Alphabet reported $119.8 billion in second-quarter revenue, up 24%, while Apple and Amazon are scheduled to publish results on Thursday. According to CNBC, OpenAI faces growing competition from Chinese AI developers, with Moonshot AI introducing Kimi K3 earlier this month, which the company said narrows the gap with leading US AI models and outperforms OpenAI and Anthropic's most capable systems on selected benchmarks. Microsoft shares moved 8% higher in extended trading after the earnings announcement, though the stock has given up 19% so far in 2026 as investors have squeezed longstanding software stocks amid fears of disruption from generative AI models.
