{"id":24378,"date":"2023-04-26T14:29:03","date_gmt":"2023-04-26T14:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/ai-all-star-microsofts-rosy\/"},"modified":"2023-04-26T14:33:30","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T14:33:30","slug":"ai-all-star-microsofts-rosy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/ai-all-star-microsofts-rosy\/","title":{"rendered":"‘AI All-Star’ Microsoft’s rosy earnings spark rally in tech stocks"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Nivedita Balu and Aditya Soni<\/p>\n

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp shares surged about 7% on Wednesday and lifted tech stocks after the company’s robust earnings eased fears of a slowdown in cloud computing and boosted confidence that artificial intelligence will become a major growth driver.<\/p>\n

The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant is set to add about $160 billion to its market value and replace Saudi Aramco as the world’s second-most valuable company, if current gains hold. Its $2.2 trillion valuation trails Apple Inc’s by about $300 billion.<\/p>\n

At least 18 analysts raised their price targets on the stock, with Piper Sandler’s Brent Braceli saying “AI-All Star” Microsoft’s results floored investors with better-than-expected growth across several units ranging from cloud computing to Office productivity software.<\/p>\n

Microsoft’s results bode well for an industry that has laid off tens of thousands of workers recently as demand fades in the face of a sagging economy.<\/p>\n

Shares of Big Tech peers Amazon.com Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and Alphabet Inc rose between 1% and 3%. <\/p>\n

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GRAPHIC: Microsoft AI https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/graphics\/MICROSOFT-AI\/klvygbbnzvg\/Pasted%20image%201682517328864.png <\/p>\n

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Alphabet, the parent company of Google, had also reported better-than-expected quarterly results, but its search engine grew just 2% compared with the 10% increase for Microsoft’s Bing – which is benefiting from the integration of the tech behind ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

“Investors didn’t really like the Alphabet call as much as the Microsoft call… Microsoft was very aggressive talking about AI and Google was very conservative,” said Dennis Dick, a market structure analyst at Triple D Trading.<\/p>\n

The Windows maker’s earnings call on Wednesday underscored the growing importance of AI, with CEO Satya Nadella mentioning it 50 times in a 60-minute event.<\/p>\n

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GRAPHIC: Alphabet and Microsoft talk up AI https:\/\/www.reuters.com\/graphics\/USA-STOCKS\/AI\/lgvdkajbepo\/chart.png <\/p>\n

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Nadella said the company had more than 2,500 Azure-OpenAI service customers ranging from Coursera and Mercedes-Benz to Snap Inc and that AI was integrated into a wide array of products.<\/p>\n

“Given the significant head start OpenAI has over other generative AI engines and Microsoft has over its hyperscaler (large-scale data center) competitors, we believe that Azure may gain share as generative AI continues to proliferate into many more corners of software and the economy,” D A Davidson analyst Gil Luria said.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

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(Reporting by Nivedita Balu and Aditya Soni in Bengaluru, Additional reporting by Ankika Biswas; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)<\/p>\n

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By Nivedita Balu and Aditya Soni (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp shares surged about 7% on Wednesday and lifted tech stocks after the company’s robust earnings eased fears of a slowdown in cloud computing and boosted confidence that artificial intelligence will become a major growth driver. The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant is set to add about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":24379,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1213],"tags":[1223],"class_list":["post-24378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-u-s-business","tag-updated"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-content\/uploads\/Reuters_Direct_Media\/USOnlineReportBusinessNews\/tagreuters.com2023binary_LYNXMPEJ3P0I7-VIEWIMAGE.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24378"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24378\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24653,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24378\/revisions\/24653"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lynettelockhart.com\/client\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}