Microsoft reported a massive spike in its spending as the tech giant works to meet booming demand for artificial intelligence.
While the top- and bottom-line numbers for Microsoft (MSFT) give a sense of how the business performed in the quarter ended September 2025, it could be worth looking at how some of its key metrics compare to Wall Street estimates and year-ago values.
Microsoft's Q1 revenue hit $77.7 billion, surpassing Wall Street expectations. The earnings release followed an Azure outage and a new deal with OpenAI.
Microsoft said Wednesday (Oct. 29) that it is working on issues that have been causing service degradation on Microsoft 365 (Business or Enterprise) productivity apps and Microsoft Azure cloud computing services.
The company reported that it spent a higher-than-expected $34.9 billion in capital expenditures during its quarter.
Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) reported stronger-than-expected first-quarter earnings on Wednesday, driven by cloud and AI growth, but shares fell in after-hours trading as investors digested slower-than-expected Azure revenue growth. Azure and other cloud services were up 40% year-on-year, which was slightly below Wall Street expectations and pressured shares despite the overall strong results.
Microsoft Inc. is scheduled to report earnings after Wednesday's close. The stock hit another fresh record high just above $555.45/share and is currently trading near $539/share.
A widespread Microsoft Azure outage is ongoing.
Microsoft Azure, the cloud computing service provided by the company, is experiencing a significant outage on Wednesday. The problems started around 12 p.m.
Microsoft Azure, including Office 365, Minecraft, X-Box Live, Copilot and many other services, was down for thousands of users on Wednesday due to issues with its domain name system.
Microsoft was hit with an outage affecting its Azure and 365 services hours before the company was scheduled to report quarterly results. "We are investigating an issue with the Azure Portal where customers may be experiencing issues accessing the portal," the company said in the status page.
Microsoft will report results for its fiscal first quarter after the bell Wednesday. Analysts expect total revenue growth of 15%, while Microsoft's Azure cloud business is projected to show expansion of 37%.