Microsoft just shared Azure’s actual revenue in dollars: $33.2 billion

Microsoft has never disclosed Azure’s quarterly revenue in dollars. He usually only shared a growth percentage or described revenue milestones vaguely. But on Wednesday, when it reported another record quarter, it reported that Azure generated a healthy $33.2 billion in revenue for the July-September quarter, up 48% from a year earlier.

This disclosure allows investors to more directly align Azure’s performance with that of Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, whose parent companies already report their cloud revenue in dollars each quarter.

Alphabet, which also reported results Wednesday, said Google Cloud brought in $30.7 billion in the same quarter, putting Azure slightly ahead. But Google Cloud, which also includes Google’s Workspace subscriptions, nearly doubled its revenue from the previous year, growing about twice as fast as Azure, according to TechCrunch calculations.

Azure, where companies rent computing power to run applications, SaaS and to build and run AI models, is now Microsoft’s largest and fastest growing product line, according to company figures. It accounted for about 36% of Microsoft’s $92.3 billion in quarterly revenue.

Azure’s revenue was also about $850 million higher than the $32.3 billion analysts expected. Azure’s 48% growth rate also exceeded the 44% to 45% forecast by Microsoft CFO Amy Hood during the company’s July earnings call.

Azure is part of Agents and Infra, one of two new business segments introduced by Microsoft this quarter. Microsoft previously reported three segments: productivity and business processes, intelligent cloud, and more personal computing. The new Agents and Infra segment, which combines Azure with Microsoft 365’s cloud business, brought in $76.8 billion, up 25% from the previous year.

Amazon releases its results on Thursday. Analysts also expect growth in its cloud, Amazon Web Services. It’s the biggest cloud since the dawn of time and no one expects Microsoft to surpass it right now. But with everyone declaring real dollars, the race is on.