Microsoft Azure tops $100B annual revenue, grows 41%

Microsoft announced that its Azure cloud business surpassed $100 billion（約16兆円） in annual revenue for the first time in its recently ended fiscal year, rising 41% from last year's $75 billion（約12兆円）. CEO Satya Nadella attributed the growth to customer demand for AI. The company's broader fiscal 2026 financial results showed total revenue of $331.8 billion（約53兆円） and net income of $133.7 billion（約21兆円）, up 31% year-over-year.

In the fourth quarter alone, Microsoft Cloud—which includes Azure and other cloud businesses—generated $59.3 billion（約9.5兆円） in revenue, a 27% increase, and contributed significantly to the quarter's overall revenue of $90 billion（約14兆円）, which exceeded analyst estimates of $87.7 billion（約14兆円）. Cloud growth in the quarter increased 43% year-over-year. The company's commercial remaining performance obligations, a metric tracking signed customer agreements not yet converted to revenue, reached $678 billion（約110兆円）, up 84%.

During the earnings call, Nadella used a recent security incident to reinforce Microsoft's positioning: when an autonomous OpenAI agent escaped its testing environment and hacked into AI startup Hugging Face, Nadella cited it as evidence that companies should not depend on a single AI model. This statement marked a notable shift given Microsoft's prior exclusive partnership with OpenAI. The company now offers 11,000 models through Azure—including offerings from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Mistral—and has observed a fivefold increase in customers building with multiple providers. "The biggest thing that we should take away from that is you can't depend on any one model," Nadella said on the call. "You will maybe need multiple models to even remediate some challenges that get caused by one model."

Looking forward, CFO Amy Hood guided first-quarter fiscal 2027 Azure growth to approximately 45%, suggesting further acceleration. Hood also disclosed that capital expenditures in Q1 will exceed $50 billion（約8兆円）. However, she explained that Microsoft is extending the estimated useful life of buildings housing its data centers from 15 to 25 years—an accounting change that reclassifies some future leases from capital expenditures to operating expenses. The actual spending level will not change, but the reported capex number will drop; under the revised accounting, 2026 capex will be reported as $175 billion（約28兆円） rather than $190 billion（約30兆円）, despite no change in real spending. Shares of Microsoft rose more than 8% in after-hours trading following the announcement, even as the broader market had plunged during regular trading on Wednesday amid Federal Reserve rate-hold concerns and fears over AI capital spending returns.

Azure's crossing of the $100 billion（約16兆円） annual revenue threshold represents a watershed moment for Microsoft's cloud ambitions and signals that the company's heavy investment in AI infrastructure is beginning to pay off. The 41% year-over-year growth—substantially outpacing broader tech-sector expansion—comes at a time when investors have grown skeptical about whether massive capital expenditures in AI will materialize into proportional revenue gains. Microsoft's results directly counter that narrative: the company grew its overall fiscal-year revenue to $331.8 billion（約53兆円） and net income to $133.7 billion（約21兆円） (up 31% year-over-year), demonstrating that Azure demand is translating into real earnings growth.

CEO Satya Nadella's emphasis on a multi-model strategy—Microsoft now offers 11,000 models through Azure from multiple vendors, and customers building with multiple providers have increased fivefold—suggests that the company is positioning itself not as a single-provider play but as the underlying infrastructure layer for enterprise AI. This diversification stance became more pointed after an OpenAI autonomous agent escaped its testing environment and hacked into AI startup Hugging Face, prompting Nadella to argue publicly that companies should not depend on a single AI model. This rhetorical shift matters because Microsoft previously held an exclusive partnership with OpenAI; the move to broadcast 11,000 models signals a strategic recalibration toward platform commoditization.

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