July 30, Microsoft Extends Pre-Market Gain to 10% as Q4 Revenue and Profit Beat Expectations, Validating Returns on AI Investments.
Microsoft Corporation released its financial results for the fourth quarter and full fiscal year 2026 on July 29, in the United States. Driven by strong demand for cloud services and the accelerating commercialization of artificial intelligence, the company reported quarterly revenue of $90 billion, an 18% year-over-year increase, while net profit surged 31% to $35.8 billion, with all key financial metrics exceeding market forecasts.
The earnings data indicates that the cloud business has become the core growth engine for Microsoft. During the fourth quarter, Microsoft's Azure cloud revenue grew by 43% year-over-year, pushing the full fiscal year 2026 Azure annual revenue past the $100 billion mark for the first time. Meanwhile, the paid user base for the AI assistant Copilot, embedded within the Office suite, climbed from over 20 million in the previous quarter to more than 30 million.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella noted that the breakthrough growth in the cloud business reflects global customers' trust in the company's ability to help them achieve AI transformation. Additionally, Microsoft's commercial unfulfilled order backlog rose 8% quarter-over-quarter to $678 billion, with the $51 billion in new orders during the quarter all coming from the broad enterprise market outside of frontier model research institutions, indicating that AI applications are accelerating their deployment across the broader real economy.
