Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday that its profit for the October-December quarter grew 10% from the same time last year as it works to capitalize on the huge amounts of money it has spent to advance its artificial intelligence technology.

We continue to believe that Microsoft remains uniquely positioned to monetize the vast new AI opportunity across applications,” writes BofA Securities analyst Brad Sills.

The software titan is due to report earnings after the closing bell Wednesday. A later conference call could shed light on artificial-intelligence spending plans and cloud-computing growth. Microsoft is expected to report earnings per share of $3.

Since Microsoft reported fiscal Q1 earnings on Oct. 30, Wall Street analysts have trimmed their Q2 estimates but are now more bullish on the stock. Of the 60 analysts surveyed by FactSet who cover Microsoft,

Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) has lagged behind the NASDAQ over the past year but is off to a strong start in 2025, outperforming the broader market.

Microsoft shares dropped 5 per cent, while Meta was up 2 per cent after their October-December Q1 results, both companies posted profits, according to AP reports.

Read about Brookfield Renewable Partners, Intel, Apple and more in the latest Market Talks covering Technology, Media and Telecom.

The week's investing action plan includes a strong dose of pharma and biotech earnings, January econ reports, plus Amazon and Alphabet.

Apple Inc. (AAPL) on Thursday delivered on its earnings, helping provide a lift to tech stocks. Still, two out of the "Magnificent Seven," namely Nvidia and Microsoft, were facing a weekly loss. Read: Nvidia's CEO, whose chips play a key role in the DeepSeek drama, becomes latest corporate exec to pay a visit to Trump

The Nasdaq Composite has erased early gains as losses for shares of Microsoft Corp. and Nvidia Corp. accelerated, weighing on the broader index. Microsoft shares were down more than 6% earlier, while Nvidia was down nearly 4%,

Building and operating AI systems is costly, and Microsoft has said it plans to spend 80 billion dollars (£64.38 billion) this year as it expands its global network of energy-hungry computing centres and supplies them with specialised chips to train and run AI models.