Azure's 33% Growth Shows AI driving Cloud
- May 19
- 2 min read
Azure growth reaccelerated to 33% with AI driving 16 points. Microsoft shattered Wall Street expectations this quarter, while giving us a rare glimpse into the economics of AI adoption at scale. Here is what cloud GTM leaders need to know:
"Cloud and AI are the essential inputs for every business to expand output, reduce costs, and accelerate growth," emphasized Satya Nadella, adding that "When it comes to cloud migrations, we saw accelerating demand with customers in every industry."
Numbers confirm that AI isn't cannibalizing core cloud growth; it's complementing and accelerating it.
Azure's 33% growth (35% in constant currency) signals a remarkable reacceleration in an environment where most expected moderation.
What's telling: while AI services contributed 16% to that growth, it was actually non-AI workloads that exceeded expectations.
Amy Hood, CFO stressed: "The real outperformance in Azure this quarter was in our non-AI business."
Cloud commitments continue to climb
Microsoft's commercial remaining performance obligation reached $315B - staggering $80B (34%) increase YoY.
Azure portion of commitments: $157.5B+ (conservatively estimated as 50% of Microsoft's total $315B commercial RPO), up $8.5B from last quarter.
This shows customers' long-term confidence in cloud and AI growth
AI adoption is surging across MSFT portfolio
Foundry (agent & AI app factory) used by developers at 70,000+ enterprises
100+ trillion tokens processed this quarter (5x YoY)
15+ million GitHub Copilot users (up 4x YoY)
Microsoft Fabric reached 21,000 paid customers (up 80% YoY)
Microsoft 365 Copilot customer base up 3x YoY
Microsoft remains committed to its massive infrastructure investments
CapEx reached $21.4B this quarter, while MSFT also reinforced Satya's previous commitment to spend $80B on cloud and AI infrastructure in fiscal 2025.
Despite these investments, demand is so strong that Microsoft now expects "AI capacity constraints beyond June."
Partners were repeatedly highlighted on the earnings call, as essential to Microsoft's success:
"Results exceeded expectations, driven by focused execution from our sales and partner teams."- CFO
A fascinating insight came from Amy Hood's comparison of AI economics to the previous cloud transition:
"Our margins on the AI side of the business are better than they were at this point by far than when we went through the same transition and the server to cloud transition."
This is key for partners betting on AI - the economics are potentially more favorable than the early cloud transition, but with dramatically faster adoption curves.
For cloud GTM leaders, the implications are clear:
Partner ecosystem is critical
Core cloud growth remains robust
Economics of AI are potentially more favorable than early cloud
The opportunity lies in creating clear differentiation and alignment with hyperscaler priorities.
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