REDMOND, Wash.—Microsoft on Tuesday reported a 9 percent increase in profit for the January-March quarter, as growth in cloud computing sales helped bolster its plans to expand its use of artificial intelligence.
The company reported quarterly profit of $18.3 billion, or $2.45 per share, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings of $2.24 a share.
The software maker posted revenue of $52.9 billion in the period, its third fiscal quarter, up 7 percent from the same period a year ago. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Microsoft to post revenue of $51.02 billion for the quarter.
The quarter marked an ambitious push by Microsoft to capitalize on its investments in artificial intelligence and close partnership with San Francisco-based startup OpenAI with the February release of a new AI chatbot feature on its search engine Bing….