Microsoft posts best quarter in decades as AI focus strengthens

Microsoft just had the kind of quarter that makes rival CFOs quietly reread their own slide decks. Fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 revenue came in at $90 billion, up 18% from a year earlier. Cloud and AI demand did most of the heavy lifting. Shares rose approximately 37.5% to 39% during calendar Q3 2026. That was the company’s best stretch since 1998, and it added roughly $1 trillion in market capitalization. The numbers behind the rally Microsoft reported results on July 29. The next day, the stock jumped 16%, adding approximately $450 billion in market value in a single session. The star of the show was Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. Revenue in that division grew 43%, the fastest pace in four years. Azure also crossed $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time. The broader Microsoft Cloud segment, which bundles Azure with other cloud products, brought in $59.3 billion. That marks a 27% increase year over year. Microsoft 365 Copilot passed 30 million paid seats. Each seat is a business paying extra for AI help on top of software it already uses. Why the AI spending story finally clicked On the earnings call, Microsoft executives argued that heavy infrastructure inv...