Is artificial intelligence (AI) a major axis of economic development? Will the huge investments made in AI generate commensurate revenues? During the publication of their quarterly results, Thursday April 25 for Microsoft and Google, the day before for Meta, the digital giants sought to reassure financial analysts on these questions.
Questions focus on the expense of building the IT infrastructure needed to train and operate AI models capable of creating text or images. The total amount of Microsoft’s investments thus reached 14 billion dollars (13 billion euros) from January to March, almost 50% more than a year earlier. In comparison, its turnover reached 62 billion (+ 17%) and its net profit 21.9 billion (+ 20%). In addition, the group invested 13 billion in OpenAI, the creator of the ChatGPT conversational robot.
Google invested 12 billion dollars over the quarter, for a turnover of 80.5 billion (+ 15%) and 25.5 billion in net profit (+ 46%). Meta has announced IT spending of 35 to 40 billion in 2024, and forecast an increase in 2025, like Microsoft.
“A new era of transformation through AI”
We enter “a new era of transformation via AI, which will generate increases in activity in all sectors”, justified the general director of Microsoft, Satya Nadella. AI would thus be responsible for 7 points in the 31% increase in revenues from its cloud branch of online services and hosting for professionals (which brings in $28 billion). Sixty-five percent of large Fortune 500 companies have reportedly used one of OpenAI’s AI models, of which Microsoft is the sole third-party distributor. Microsoft has assured that it has “hundreds of customers” making queries to AI models (from OpenAI or other providers), including Accenture, EY, Schneider Electric or TomTom, for its “in-car entertainment”.
Sixty percent of Fortune 500 companies use Copilot, Microsoft’s conversational assistant for creating texts or images in its Office 365 office suite (Word, Excel, Teams, etc.). BP, Moody’s, Novo Nordisk and Nvidia have subscribed to more than 10,000 employees (at $30 per month). And, according to Microsoft, 30,000 organizations have used Copilot Studio, which offers to personalize Copilot, in particular by training it on company data. Among the sectoral versions launched by Microsoft, Dax Copilot, dedicated to health, would be used by two hundred companies in the sector. The computer code writing assistance tool Copilot claims 1.8 million developer subscribers (from $10 per month), up 35% over a quarter.
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