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Microsoft has reported financial results which beat market expectations, as its new artificial-intelligence features helped attract customers to its cloud and software services.

Shares of Microsoft fell 2.1% to $US400.16 in after-hours trade.

The company, in collaboration with ChatGPT creator OpenAI, has pushed chatbots into its core products such as its Office software and Bing search engine over the past year.

This helped Microsoft attract business customers, eager to try the tech industry’s next breakthrough.

Investor buzz over AI helped Microsoft’s shares rise by 57% last year.

Its cloud-computing business (already the second-biggest behind that of Amazon) grew by nearly a third in the most recent quarter.

“We’ve moved from talking about AI to applying AI at scale,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a statement.

“By infusing AI across every layer of our tech stack, we’re winning new customers and helping drive new benefits and productivity gains across every sector.”

Investors are watching Microsoft’s Azure and Office revenues to see what kind of sales flow comes from the tens of billions of dollars the company plans to pour into data centres this year to deliver generative AI.

Total revenue grew 18% to $US62 billion in the quarter ended December 31 (compared with the average analyst estimate of $US61.1 billion, according to LSEG data).

Its adjusted profit of $US2.93 per share beat an average estimate of $US2.78 per share.

Revenue at Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud unit (which houses the Azure cloud computing platform) grew 20% to $US25.9 billion.