For the current fiscal third quarter, Microsoft forecast Azure revenue growth of 37 per cent to 38 per cent, versus analyst estimates of 36.41 per cent, according to data from Visible Alpha. Competition has weighed on Microsoft’s stock as investor doubts persist over whether Big Tech will deliver enough returns to make up for the AI spending. In the reported quarter, Microsoft’s capital spending totalled US$37.5 billion, a jump of nearly 66 per cent from last year and with about two-thirds of the spending going towards computing chips. Microsoft said the contracted backlog in its cloud business more than doubled to US$625 billion. Microsoft said that excluding OpenAI, its cloud backlog grew at 28 per cent, even when including a US$30 billion deal with Claude-maker Anthropic.