- Sangakkara backs Samson as India keeper for T20 World Cup
- Spain struggles to stamp out drug trade in poor south
- Japanese auto giant Toyota posts record net profit
- Malaysia plans to introduce 'orangutan diplomacy': minister
- Table-topping Hurricanes beef up for Super Rugby showdown in Auckland
- Rubbish, climate change help boost Portugal's white stork numbers
- Europe's 'Swifties' await icon with open arms
- Israel launches fresh Gaza strikes as negotiators work towards truce
- Mongolia's wildlife at risk from overgrazing
- Toyota posts record yearly net income, revenue
- 'A blessing': Rains refill Iraq's drought-hit reservoirs
- Milking venom from Australia's deadly marine animals
- Top-seeded Celtics, Thunder win playoff openers
- US halts bomb shipment to Israel over Rafah concerns
- Global car giants seek tech allies in China's cutthroat EV market
- Mbappe denied dream PSG farewell after Champions League exit
- Celtics rout Cavs to take playoff series opener
- Kim Jong Un mourns death of North Korea's former propaganda chief
- US centenarian to marry at Normandy, 80 years after Allied landing
- Ritacuba Blanco: death of a Colombian glacier
- US restorationist solves 60-million-year-old dinosaur fossil 'puzzles'
- US touts action on irregular migration at Guatemala gathering
- China's Xi in Serbia for talks to boost economic ties
- Boeing Starliner crewed mission postponed to May 17
- NBA fines Denver's Murray $100,000 for heating pad toss
- Reus and Hummels 'close the circle' with Champions League return to Wembley
- Rudy Gobert named 2024 NBA Defensive Player of the Year
- PSG coach Luis Enrique proud despite 'unfair' Champions League exit
- 'No one expected us' says Reus as Dortmund return to Wembley
- Florida judge indefinitely postpones Trump documents trial
- Blinken says US targeting those 'preying' on migrants
- Porzingis out but 'better than we thought' says Celtics coach
- Hummels stuns Mbappe and PSG to take Dortmund to Champions League final
- Sideways day on Wall Street as London notches another record
- China's Xi lands in Serbia after talking Ukraine, trade in France
- OpenAI unveils tool to detect DALL-E images
- Argentina introduces 10,000-peso banknote
- Security guard shot outside Drake's home in Toronto
- Cappuccino-fuelled Kane must 'deliver' against Madrid: Bayern coach Tuchel
- Delhi down Rajasthan to stay in IPL play-off race
- ArcelorMittal hit by Olympic flame greenwashing accusations
- Tiger and world's top 100 named in PGA Championship field
- Brazilians queue for precious water as flood damage intensifies
- TikTok challenges potential US ban in court
- Israel seizes Rafah crossing as Gaza truce talks resume
- Ukraine says thwarted Russian-led plot to kill Zelensky
- US repatriates two dozen Westerners from Syria IS camp
- Penske bans team president, three more over cheating scandal
- Europe student Gaza protests spread, sparking clashes, arrests
- Disney reports small loss but sees improvement in streaming
Microsoft, Google earnings shine as AI drives revenue
Microsoft and Google on Thursday drubbed quarterly earnings expectations as the tech titans continued investing heavily in artificial intelligence promising to shake up the way people live.
The results were cheered by Wall Street investors who pushed up Alphabet's share price more than 11 percent and Microsoft shares up nearly 4 percent in after-market trades.
Google parent Alphabet reported profit of $23.7 billion on revenue of $80.5 billion, crediting growth in cloud computing, YouTube, and online search advertising.
Artificial intelligence helped drive the Silicon Valley tech giant's business, according to Alphabet and Google chief Sundar Pichai.
"We are well under way with our Gemini era and there's great momentum across the company," Pichai said, referring to the Gemini AI model that powers services across the Google platform.
"Our leadership in AI research and infrastructure, and our global product footprint, position us well for the next wave of AI innovation."
Some $9.5 billion was brought in by Google's cloud computing unit, compared with $7.5 billion in the same quarter a year earlier.
Google also reported its first-ever dividend of 20 cents per share.
"Things are looking good for Google," said Emarketer senior analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf.
However, the future of Google's core search business is not assured, the analyst cautioned.
Google faces an antitrust case in the United States, and the incorporation of AI-generated content into the company's leading search engine "will arguably be the biggest change to the search advertising market since its inception," Mitchell-Wolf said.
The earnings come as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and other rivals competing in the hot field of AI face scrutiny from regulators in the US and Europe.
The US Federal Trade Commission early this year launched a study of AI investments and alliances as part of an effort to make sure regulatory oversight can keep up with developments in the sector and stop major players from shutting out competitors in a field promising upheaval in multiple areas of business.
Amazon -- through its Amazon Web Services arm -- Microsoft and Google are the world's biggest providers of cloud-based data centers, which store and process data on a vast scale, in addition to being some of the world's richest companies.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said sales in the January to March period rose by 17 percent from a year earlier to $61.9 billion, with net profit up by 20 percent to $21.9 billion.
Microsoft has been hugely rewarded by investors since it aggressively pushed into rolling out generative AI, starting with its $13 billion partnership with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, in 2023.
The embrace of AI has boosted sales of its key cloud services, such as Azure, which have become the core of Microsoft's business under Nadella’s leadership.
Cloud giants Amazon and Google are also looking to beef up cloud sales by rolling out AI features to clients and prove that the AI revolution is more than just hype.
In its push, Microsoft has moved beyond OpenAI and signed partnerships with other promising AI startups such as Mistral AI, as well as investing heavily internationally.
In March, Microsoft also announced that it hired DeepMind AI and Inflection AI co-founder Mustafa Suleyman to lead up its AI unit, poaching one of the industry’s key figures from a promising startup.
- Unleashed revolution -
The succession of moves has often taken archrival Google by surprise and seen Microsoft pip Apple as the world's biggest publicly traded company.
"Microsoft's earnings show the company is well-positioned to profit from the AI revolution it helped unleash," said Emarketer senior director of briefings Jeremy Goldman.
"While monetizing AI as effectively as Google remains a challenge, Microsoft has positioned itself in the realm of consideration for ad buys -- something that wasn't necessarily the case even a few years ago."
Meta's results on Wednesday however were a first sign of AI fatigue.
The Facebook parent said its quarterly profits soared last quarter but worries over its spending on artificial intelligence saw its share price take a hit.
A potential dark cloud for AI is government regulators that are taking a closer look at Microsoft's ties with OpenAI and others amid fears that the giant is using its huge financial war chest to thwart the emergence of rivals.
Britain's competition watchdog on Wednesday was the latest to begin examining tie-ups between artificial intelligence firms and their US big tech partners, including Microsoft.
C.Kovalenko--BTB