The disruptive elements of the U.S. Stargate program and the release of the Chinese artificial-intelligence company DeepSeek has put more critical eyes than ever on major AI players like Microsoft In its earnings report after the close on Wednesday,

Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday that its profit for the October-December quarter grew 10% from the same time last year as it works to capitalize on the huge amounts of money it has spent to advance its artificial intelligence technology.

Microsoft on Wednesday posted disappointing Azure cloud business growth and large artificial intelligence expenses, hitting its shares as a recent surge in low-cost Chinese AI technology threatens to undermine the case for such big spending.