By Michael Scott
Alphabet and Microsoft report revenues with considerable artificial intelligence and cloud computing developments. They also intend to accelerate artificial intelligence trends this year.
On January 30, major technology behemoths Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent firm, disclosed the previous quarter’s earnings. The earnings include advancements in cloud computing, artificial intelligence (AI), and others.
Over the past year, artificial intelligence has been a major topic in the technology industry, with the international market size reaching $196.6B last year. Google and Microsoft were some of 2023’s leaders in the artificial intelligence development space, with the two unveiling their high-level chatbots.
Microsoft Taps AI-Powered Tools to Drive Sales
At the end of 2023, Microsoft experienced a surge in sales, with its artificial intelligence tools playing a critical role. The report shows that the firm’s revenue surged 18% year-on-year from September to December to above $60B.
Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive officer and chairman, commented on the firm’s artificial intelligence development. He noted they have shifted from discussing the technology to implementing it at scale. By incorporating artificial intelligence in all layers of their technology stack, they are getting more clients and playing a crucial role in driving new productivity gains and benefits across all sectors.
The unveiling of the end-of-year results happened as Microsoft took the helm as the globe’s most valuable public firm with a value of $3T, beating Apple. Together with its artificial intelligence offerings, Microsoft’s sale of Azure, its cloud computing service, increased 30% year-on-year, which was a more acceptable result compared to what had been envisaged by industry experts.
Microsoft’s overall profits from the fourth quarter rose 33% year-on-year, reaching $21.9B. The firm began this year by unveiling Copilot, its AI chatbot’s pro version, which can develop Office integration and custom GPTs. Nevertheless, it also started the year entangled in a copyright case against OpenAI and a newspaper.
Alphabet Taps AI to Bolster Growth
Alphabet also relied on its artificial intelligence incorporations as a critical factor in its fourth-quarter triumph. Sundar Pichai, the firm’s chief executive officer, claimed he is delighted by Google Search’s strength as well as Cloud’s and YouTube’s growth.
Sundar said each is benefitting from their artificial intelligence innovation and investments. As they shift into the Gemini period, more should be anticipated. Alphabet’s reported a combined $86B for the fourth quarter, which rose 13% year-on-year.
Alphabet’s chief investment officer and president, Ruth Porat, claimed the firm is dedicated to ‘robustly redeveloping its cost base’ to invest and back new growth opportunities. Google started 2024 by drafting a plan for reducing jobs in exchange for attaining its ambitious objectives in areas such as artificial intelligence.
In January last year, Google revealed a 6% cut to its international workforce. The firm had dismissed 182,381 workers by September.
Nevertheless, Google began 2024 by unveiling Lumiere, a realistic artificial intelligence text-to-video generator. It utilizes a time-space diffusion framework to convert images and text into genuine fake intelligence-created videos with on-demand editing abilities.
Global largest tech companies are attracted to generative AI as an innovative necessity to improve problem-solving and creativity approaches.
The tech companies acknowledge that generative AI yields versatility beyond healthcare, entertainment, and media. Its inherent potential is illustrated in the sector’s growth to a $12.1 billion valuation in 2023 and is forecasted to hit $119.7 billion in 2032.
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