The Big Tech giants Microsoft and Alphabet – the parent company of Google – released earnings on Jan. 30 for the previous quarter, with highlights including developments in AI and cloud computing, among others.
Over the last year, AI was one of the most prominent topics in the tech industry, with a global market size reaching $196.6 billion in 2023. Microsoft and Google were among the leaders in the AI development space in 2023, both releasing their own high-level chatbots.
Microsoft saw accelerated sales at the end of the year, with its AI tools being a major factor. According to the report, the company revenue rose 18% year-on-year from September to December to more than $60 billion.
Along with its AI offerings, Microsoft’s sales of its cloud computing service of Azure rose 30% year-on-year, which was a better result than predicted by industry analysts. The company’s overall profits for Q4 were up 33% year-on-year, coming in at $21.9 billion.
Microsoft entered 2024 launching the pro-version of its AI chatbot Copilot, which includes the capabilities to create custom GPTs and Office integration. However, it also entered the new year caught in a major copyright lawsuit against the New York Times, along with OpenAI.
Google started the year by outlining a plan for cutting jobs, in exchange for reaching its ambitious goals in areas including AI. In January 2023, it announced a cut of 6% to its global workforce and by September 2023, the company had laid off 182,381 employees globally.
Nonetheless, Google started the year with the release of a new realistic AI text-to-video generator called “Lumiere,” which uses a time-space diffusion model to transform text and images into realistic AI-generated videos with on-demand editing capabilities.
