| |NOVEMBER 20239TECH MINTIn its most recent quarter, Microsoft reported good sales indicating its efforts in generative AI were starting to boost revenue, demonstrating that its corporate clients have overcome their hesitations about making large purchases in the face of an uncertain economic climate.Most notably by reversing the crucial cloud computing product's previously decreasing growth.In the three months that ended in September, the company's sales increased 13 percent from the same period last year to $56.5 billion. Profit increased 27 percent to $22.3 billion. The results exceeded both Microsoft's own predictions and analyst expectations.Microsoft has previously informed investors that meaningful outcomes from AI wouldn't occur until the beginning of 2024, when more products became broadly accessible. The company and its rivals are vying to include generative AI into almost every product they provide. Thanks to its cooperation with and $13 billion investment in the firm OpenAI, which unveiled the chatbot ChatGPT about a year ago, Microsoft is regarded by many businesses as a prominent provider of artificial intelligence (AI).Azure, Microsoft's flagship cloud computing offering, saw a 29% increase in growth from the prior quarter. More than the company had anticipated, generative AI solutions accounted for about 3 percentage points of Azure's growth, including the access Microsoft gives to OpenAI's GPT-4 language model.Over the previous year, businesses and other organizations that use cloud computing had been more frugal with their expenditures as they sought to reduce costs in the unsteady economy. Therefore, even as Microsoft and its rivals dove deeply into the next wave of AI, they had to contend with limited client budgets.Sales of Microsoft's commercial cloud subscriptions for its Teams, Excel, and Word productivity suites accelerated and increased by 18 percent in the third quarter. Next month, business clients will be able to purchase these goods with Microsoft's "Copilot" generative AI integration, which the investment bank UBS called "easily the most anticipated GenAI-based software application launch."Microsoft's personal computing division only increased by three percent, to $13.7 billion, demonstrating how consumer habits have changed since the pandemic's rampant laptop purchases. Windows operating system sales for brand-new PCs increased by four percent.Microsoft also revealed last month that the Internal Revenue Service had concluded, following a ten-year examination, that the company owed $28.9 billion in unpaid taxes from 2004 to 2013. Microsoft's method of shifting revenues overseas has led to a dispute between the IRS and the firm. Microsoft announced that it was contesting the judgment, a procedure that may take years to complete. The investment company General Atlantic is planning to pay an unknown price for a minority stake in the Indian online B2B travel distribution platform Travel Boutique Online (TBO).According to reports, Affirma Capital-owned firms and General Atlantic entered into a contract for the transaction. After this purchase, Affirma Capital will keep holding shares of TBO.Shantanu Rastogi, Managing Director and Head of India at General Atlantic says, "We are thrilled to work with the company to enable the next generation of international travel as we see enormous potential for TBO in the years to come, including prospects for global expansion."TBO, a global travel distribution platform established in 2006, had gross transaction values of $2.73 billion for FY23 and was present in more than 100 nations.The TBO platform provides a comprehensive, multilingual, and multi-currency one-stop shop for customers.Averaging over 40,000 purchasers every year, they have real-time access to the platform's global travel inventory, which includes more than 700 airlines and more than 1 million hotels.Gaurav Bhatnagar and Ankush Nijhawan, cofounders, TBO says, "We are appreciative of Affirma Capital's tremendous assistance over the past five years, particularly during the Covid-19 pandemic. For this phase of our expansion journey, General Atlantic is what we consider to be the right partner."Udai Dhawan, founding partner and India Head at Affirma Capital says, "TBO is on the cusp of consolidating the travel technology landscape, and we continue to believe in its potential to aggregate and digitize travel for travel partners across the globe and are excited to continue to retain a significant minority stake in the business." MICROSOFT REPORTS GOOD SALES THANKS TO EFFORTS IN GENERATIVE AI BOOSTING REVENUEGENERAL ATLANTIC TO ACQUIRE TRAVEL-TECH PLATFORM TBO
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