Microsoft ended July–September 2026 with record quarterly revenue of $92.3 billion, up 19% from a year earlier. The company has now set a new record for ten consecutive quarters, with its cloud business remaining one of the main drivers of growth. Microsoft also disclosed Azure revenue in absolute terms for the first time: $33.2 billion for the quarter, allowing direct comparisons with the cloud divisions of Google and Amazon.

Microsoft’s quarterly net income reached $36.6 billion, up 32% on a GAAP basis. Microsoft Cloud revenue rose 30% to $63.9 billion.

Azure generated $33.2 billion

Azure is Microsoft’s platform where companies rent computing capacity, host applications and SaaS services, and develop and run artificial intelligence models. In the quarter ended in September, its revenue increased 48% year over year.

Previously, Microsoft generally reported Azure’s growth rates but did not disclose its quarterly revenue in dollars. The new figures make it possible to compare its results with those of competitors that regularly publish such numbers.

In the same quarter, Google Cloud generated $30.7 billion. Azure thus remains slightly ahead of Google’s cloud division in revenue. However, Google Cloud, which also includes Google Workspace subscriptions, grew roughly twice as fast: its revenue approximately doubled year over year, while Azure posted 48% growth.

Azure revenue also exceeded analysts’ expectations of $32.3 billion by approximately $850 million. The result also surpassed the forecast from Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood, who had projected growth of 44–45% in July.

Azure accounted for about 36% of Microsoft’s total quarterly revenue. Based on the figures the company has disclosed, it is Microsoft’s largest and fastest-growing product business.

Artificial intelligence brings in billions, but does not account for all the growth

Microsoft Cloud’s growth is driven in part by demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure, but not all cloud revenue can be considered AI revenue. For example, Microsoft 365 generated nearly $28 billion, and businesses use Azure not only to train and run models but also to host traditional applications and enterprise services.

Still, AI’s contribution is already substantial. According to Microsoft’s financial reporting, revenue from its partnership with OpenAI totaled $10 billion. Despite OpenAI’s expanding infrastructure partnerships with AWS, Oracle, and other companies, a significant share of its services still runs on Microsoft’s cloud. Anthropic also uses Azure.

Future obligations under Microsoft’s commercial contracts provided another indicator of infrastructure demand. Commercial orders not yet recognized as revenue rose 73% to $677 billion. This total includes customer commitments under existing contracts, including those involving AI development labs.

To meet these commitments, Microsoft has to invest heavily in infrastructure. Capital expenditures for the quarter exceeded $45.2 billion, a new company record.

A new way to compare cloud giants

This quarter, Microsoft changed its financial reporting structure, grouping its business into two segments: Agents and Infra and Devices and Consumer.

The first segment, which includes Azure and the Microsoft 365 cloud business, generated $76.8 billion, up 25% from a year earlier. The second reported revenue of $15.5 billion, down 3%. Revenue from Windows OEM licenses and devices fell particularly sharply, declining 22% year over year.

Disclosing Azure revenue in dollars makes competition among cloud platforms more transparent for investors. Google has already reported Google Cloud’s results, while Amazon is due to release its quarterly earnings later this week. Amazon Web Services remains the largest cloud service, and Microsoft is not yet claiming to surpass it in scale.

However, investors will now be able to compare not only growth rates but also actual revenue figures. This is particularly important amid the AI boom: cloud companies are simultaneously receiving more orders for computing capacity and investing record sums in the infrastructure needed to fulfill them.