Microsoft (MSFT): AI Drives $13B Annual Revenue Surge in Cloud and Productivity Solutions

We recently published a list of 10 AI News and Ratings Making Waves Around Wall Street. In this article, we are going to take a look at where Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) stands against other AI news and ratings making waves around Wall Street.

DeepSeek’s Bold Move in the Global AI Race

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, tech executives stressed the importance of the U.S. and its allies advancing data centers and finding the right regulatory balance to stay competitive with China in AI development. Ruth Porat from Alphabet acknowledged the US’s lead in AI models but warned that it was not guaranteed to last, Bloomberg reported.

Meanwhile, a Chinese startup, DeepSeek, launched an AI model, R1, which claimed to outperform US-developed models at a fraction of the cost. This development shook the US tech industry, with companies like OpenAI and Meta urgently analyzing DeepSeek’s model to understand its capabilities. The release has disrupted assumptions about AI economics, as DeepSeek’s R1 demonstrated that AI models could be developed more efficiently without heavy investment in specialized chips, the report stated.

DeepSeek’s rise challenges the massive spending plans of US tech giants, raising questions about the future direction of AI development, with some suggesting that focusing on efficient techniques rather than costly hardware may be the key to success.

Navigating Market Corrections

As the market experienced a mass sell-off after the Deep Seek news, some experts are not concerned about it. In a Bloomberg interview, Bob Diamond, CEO of Atlas Merchant Capital, expressed confidence in the ongoing role of artificial intelligence, believing it will be beneficial for businesses by offering more efficient and cost-effective alternatives. While acknowledging the recent tech selloff, he sees it as a correction rather than a market collapse, emphasizing that AI’s growth could spur competition and improve business operations.

For this article, we selected AI stocks by reviewing news articles, stock analysis, and press releases. We listed the stocks in ascending order of their hedge fund sentiment taken from Insider Monkey’s database of 900 hedge funds.

Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter’s strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 275% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 150 percentage points (see more details here).

Microsoft (MSFT): AI Drives $13B Annual Revenue Surge in Cloud and Productivity Solutions

A development team working together to create the next version of Windows.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT)

Number of Hedge Fund Holders: 279

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) delivers cloud, productivity, and business solutions driven by AI, advancing operational efficiency and security while making significant investments in AI development.

On January 29, Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) reported FY25 Q2 GAAP EPS of $3.23, exceeding expectations by $0.13. Revenue reached $69.6 billion, reflecting a 12.2% year-over-year increase and surpassing estimates by $790 million. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s CEO, highlighted the company’s AI advancements, noting that the AI business has exceeded an annual revenue run rate of $13 billion, marking a 175% year-over-year growth. Intelligent Cloud revenue reached $25.5 billion, up 19% year-over-year.

Overall, MSFT ranks 1st on our list of AI news and ratings making waves around Wall Street. While we acknowledge the potential of MSFT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than MSFT but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about the cheapest AI stock.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.