Vole reported growth of 29 per cent at Azure which was faster than Google Cloud’s 22 per cent growth and more than double the pace of expansion at Amazon Web Services, which reported 12 per cent.

While AWS still leads the pack in terms of overall market share, Vole is picking picking up business on the back of the fact that Azure is better for AI models. Microsoft already provides the underlying computing power for the popular ChatGPT chatbot and other products from OpenAI, which it has funded since 2019.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella told analysts on a Tuesday conference call. ““Given our leadership position, we are seeing complete new project starts, which are AI projects. As you know, AI projects are not just about AI meters. They have lots of other cloud meters as well.”

Around three  percentage points of Azure’s growth was tied to AI, higher than the two points management had forecast. The growth rate accelerated from 26 per cent in the prior quarter, while Google decelerated from about 28 per cent. AWS was in line with second-quarter growth.

Bernstein Research analysts led by Mark Moerdler said in a note to clients that they viewed Microsoft’s results as a sign the software maker “has taken the AI mantel from Google, and that Azure could become a bigger and more important hyperscale provider than AWS.”