The technology giant’s financial statement for the last fiscal quarter of 2026 revealed a scenario of profound contrasts within its operations. Released at the end of July, the numbers show that the corporation founded by Bill Gates continues to reap massive rewards from its corporate bets, while facing significant turbulence in the end-consumer market.
The company’s total revenue reached the US$90 billion mark, which represents a significant jump of 18% year-on-year. Operating profitability followed this accelerated pace, closing the period at US$40.6 billion. For shareholders, diluted earnings per share were US$4.81, representing an increase of 31% that exceeded Wall Street’s initial projections.
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The end of this cycle consolidates the 2026 fiscal year as one of the most profitable in the corporation’s recent history. In the last twelve months, global revenue expanded 18%, accompanied by a 21% increase in operating profit, proving the resilience of the business model focused on subscriptions and services for companies.
Part of this increased margin did not just come from the sale of products, but from strategic financial transactions and strong partnerships. The injection of capital into Anthropic, developer of the Claude language model, combined with a drastic reduction in expenses with labor terminations, helped to inflate the company’s coffers in this decisive quarter.
The financial impact of servers and enterprise automation tools
- The Microsoft Cloud ecosystem assumed absolute prominence in the balance sheet, injecting US$59.3 billion into cash and marking an expansion of 27% compared to the same period last year.
- The Intelligent Cloud division, which houses the entire new generation data processing infrastructure, soared 32%, delivering US$39.3 billion and consolidating itself as the fastest growing sector.
- The Azure hosting service broke the historic barrier of US$100 billion in unprecedented revenue, while the Microsoft 365 Copilot tool gained a solid base of 30 million paying users.
- The business and productivity segment advanced 14%, driven by the high adoption of Office packages and a 12% jump in engagement on the corporate social network LinkedIn.
- Revenues from advertisements on search engines increased by 10%, excluding operational expenses for acquiring traffic.
All this financial volume reflects a change in the way the corporation deals with technological innovation. There is a clear effort to develop proprietary machine learning solutions, gradually reducing the structural dependence that the company had on OpenAI in recent years.
Business challenges affect computer sales and video game industry
Contrary to corporate success, the department classified as More Personal Computing delivered the weakest indicators in the report. Although the loss was not enough to offset the gains from digital infrastructure, it raises a warning about domestic consumer behavior.
Learn more: Anthropic reaches a value of 965 billion dollars and surpasses OpenAI in new round of investments
The sale of Windows operating system licenses and the sale of proprietary hardware suffered a 7% drop, a rate that, curiously, still managed to be better than the disaster predicted by analysts. The scenario was even tougher for the games division, with Xbox brand services and content shrinking by 10%.
The rise in the price of electronics, aggravated by a new global crisis in the supply of memory chips, increased production line costs and drove away PC buyers. To make matters worse, the forced integration of automated features in Windows 11 generated strong public rejection, forcing the development team to step back and remove features that users did not like.
The electronic gaming ecosystem is going through its own period of internal turmoil. Under the command of newly appointed CEO Asha Sharma, the Xbox division is undergoing a severe downsizing that involves the closure of traditional studios, mass layoffs and a complete reassessment of the exclusivity of its titles in the console market.