Leo, Richard, and Paul discuss Microsoft earnings, a new vision video, Windows 11, more earnings, AI and dev, Xbox and games, and more.
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Microsoft earnings
Microsoft’s fiscal year ended on a high note, assuming you didn’t just get laid off
- Quarterly: net income of $27.2 billion on revenues of $76.4 billion. Those figures represent gains of 24 percent and 18 percent, respectively, year-over-year (YOY).
- Annual: a net income of $101.8 billion (up 16 percent YOY) on revenues of $281.7 billion (up 15 percent).
An analysis includes some curiously specific numbers for the first time ever:
- Another look at layoffs, which are nothing new under Satya Nadella – Over 17,000 in CY 2025 so far, despite over $100 billion in profits in FY
- Headcount “unchanged” YOY
- Big announcements below were likely made to avoid Qs about layoffs and it almost worked
- AI spending in FY was about $85 billion, higher than promised
- AI spending in this quarter will jump to $30 billion (!!!!)
- Azure earned $75 billion in revenues in FY, its first-ever disclosure of this number – Fun with math, that means $56 billion in revenues in previous FY. How far back can we go?
- Microsoft’s market cap exceeded $4 trillion after earnings release
- “Copilot” has over 100 million MAUs, really M365 Copilot, which even Nadella thinks is a new M365 tier
- GitHub Copilot has over 20 million MAUs, probably most are free
- HUGE gains in Microsoft Gaming/Xbox, discussed below
Windows 11
But first, something completely different: Microsoft’s “vision” for Windows in 2030
- David Weston a curious choice for this video, first in a series – he’s in security
- Daily work life changes thanks to AI – less toil work, less eyes and more talking, multimodal interactions
- Security – customers want appliance-level security, “it just works” security –
- Degenerates into a general security discussion
- Back to AI, reclaiming our lives
Windows 11 SE, RIP – We hardly knew you. Literally.
Windows Insider
AI + dev
OpenAI releases its first open-weight reasoning models and Microsoft gives them away for free
Apple is trying to Sherlock ChatGPT
Of course Alexa+ will get ads
Dev: Microsoft has a native app problem on Windows
Xbox and games
Big news from Microsoft earnings
- Microsoft Gaming has over 500 million MAUs – More fun with math
- COD has 50 million MAUs
- Microsoft has nearly 40 games in development
- Xbox Game Pass has $5 billion in revenues in FY, over 500 million hours played in FY
Gaming Copilot (Beta) is available on Game Bar for Windows PC for Xbox Insiders enrolled in the PC Gaming Preview
Assassin’s Creed Mirage and more coming to Game Pass this month
OG Switch models now cost more thanks to tariffs
Tips and picks
Tip of the week: Windows System Assessment Tool
Winsat’s formal assessment will give you some interesting PC performance information, (not just) similar to the old WEI score from Windows Vista
- Command line: winsat formal
- %systemroot%\performance\winsat\datastore in File Explorer – where that first bit is C:\Windows\
- Open biggest/newest XML file, look for <WinSPR> section
App pick of the week: Proton Authenticator
Proton finally makes a standalone authenticator app. Here’s how to transition from whatever you’re currently using. And why you’ll need to keep using Microsoft Authenticator too.
RunAs Radio this week: Copilot Adoption in Financial Services with Christina Wheeler
https://runasradio.com/Shows/Show/996
Brown liquor pick of the week: The Macallan Color Collection
https://www.themacallan.com/en/single-malt-scotch-whisky/colour-collection