Microsoft revealed on Wednesday that Azure produced $33.2 billion in revenue during the July–September quarter, marking a 48% rise from a year earlier. The company had never before published Azure's quarterly earnings in dollar terms.
Providing the figure allows investors to compare Azure directly with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, whose owners already report cloud revenue in dollars each quarter.
Alphabet, which also released earnings on Wednesday, reported Google Cloud revenue of $30.7 billion for the same period, putting Azure a little ahead. Google Cloud, which includes Workspace subscriptions, roughly doubled its revenue year over year and grew about twice as fast as Azure, according to TechCrunch calculations.
Azure, the platform where businesses rent computing power for applications, SaaS and AI model development, now stands as Microsoft's largest and fastest-growing product line by the company's own metrics, representing roughly 36% of Microsoft's total quarterly revenue of $92.3 billion.
The $33.2 billion figure also topped analysts' estimate of $32.3 billion by about $850 million. Azure's 48% growth beat the 44% to 45% range that CFO Amy Hood projected on the July earnings call.
Azure falls under the newly created Agents and Infra segment, one of two fresh business units introduced this quarter. Previously, Microsoft reported three segments: Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud and More Personal Computing. The Agents and Infra segment, which combines Azure with Microsoft 365's cloud services, generated $76.8 billion, a 25% increase from a year earlier.
Amazon is set to report its earnings on Thursday, and analysts expect its cloud division, Amazon Web Services, to continue growing. While AWS remains the dominant cloud provider, the disclosure of actual dollar amounts by the major players has intensified the competition.
