Microsoft adds AI expertise

Article Excerpt

MICROSOFT CORP. $241 is a buy for aggressive investors. The software giant (Nasdaq symbol MSFT; Aggressive Growth Portfolio, Manufacturing & Industry sector; Shares outstanding: 7.5 billion; Market cap: $1.8 trillion; Price-to-sales ratio: 8.9; Dividend yield: 1.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.microsoft.com) has increased its investment in OpenAI. That’s the start-up firm behind ChatGPT, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) software to interact with users in a conversational way and produce human-like written responses. The company has not yet revealed the size of this investment, but media reports suggest it was $10 billion. OpenAI’s expertise will help Microsoft’s efforts to improve the performance of its Azure cloud computing platform. Meantime, the company’s revenue in its fiscal 2023 second quarter, ended December 31, 2022, rose 2.0%, to $52.75 billion from $51.73 billion a year earlier. If you exclude currency rates, revenue gained 7%. That improvement is largely due to strong demand for its cloud computing services (up 18%), including Azure. However, unfavourable currency rates are largely why earnings in…