Microsoft beat Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, delivering financial results that shows steady demand for its cloud computing and artificial intelligence platforms.

The Redmond-based software maker reported almost $77.7 billion in revenue for its first fiscal quarter of 2026, which ran from July through September. On top of that, the company brought in $27.7 billion in profit.

Analysts were expecting $75.3 billion in revenue.

Microsoft also reported growth in its Azure cloud division, a figure the company kept hidden until its last quarter's earnings report in July. Azure's revenue increased by 40% during the first quarter compared to last year, though that may be overshadowed by a widespread Azure outage that affected much of the internet for most of the day.

In a news release, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and CFO Amy Hood both chalked the results up to increased demand for the company's cloud services and its AI-powered Copilot models.

Our planet-scale cloud and AI factory, together with Copilots across high value domains, is driving broad diffusion and real-world impact," Nadella said. "It’s why we continue to increase our investments in AI across both capital and talent to meet the massive opportunity ahead.

Microsoft's earnings came the day after the company and ChatGPT maker OpenAI announced that Microsoft would own 27% of OpenAI with a $135 billion stake. Under the terms of the deal, Microsoft has exclusive intellectual property rights with OpenAI until 2032, while OpenAI is purchasing $250 billion worth of Microsoft cloud computing services.

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