Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) announced its fiscal third-quarter results, surpassing Wall Street predictions, fueled by strong demand for artificial intelligence, which significantly boosted its Azure cloud business performance. As a result, shares of Microsoft surged over 3% intra-day today.

For the quarter ending March 31, the tech giant reported earnings of $2.94 per share on revenues of $61.9 billion. This performance exceeded expectations, with analysts predicting earnings of $2.82 per share on revenues of $60.84 billion.

Azure and other cloud services saw a growth of 31% over the previous year, surpassing the expected 28.6% growth. Notably, approximately 7% of this growth was directly attributable to advancements and integrations in artificial intelligence within their cloud services.