04:45 PM EST, 01/29/2025 (MT Newswires) -- Microsoft ( MSFT ) late Wednesday reported stronger-than-expected fiscal second-quarter results as the technology giant said demand for artificial intelligence helped boost its performance.

Per-share earnings increased to $3.23 during the three months ended Dec. 31 from $2.93 a year earlier, higher than the GAAP consensus on FactSet for $3.12. Revenue rose 12% to $69.63 billion, exceeding Wall Street's $68.87 billion view.

Shares were down 2.2% in after-hours trading.

The company's AI business has crossed an annual revenue run rate of $13 billion, up 175% year-over-year, Chief Executive Satya Nadella said in a statement.

Cloud revenue advanced 21% to $40.9 billion, Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood sad. The intelligent cloud segment's sales jumped 19% annually to $25.54 billion, driven by a 31% surge in cloud-computing platform Azure and other cloud services, Microsoft ( MSFT ) said.

The productivity and business processes division reported a 14% sales increase to $29.44 billion, buoyed by gains in Office 365 and LinkedIn. Revenue in the more personal computing unit was virtually flat at $14.65 billion as Xbox sales edged up.

US technology stocks tumbled on Monday as news surfaced that China's DeepSeek had developed a large language model in two months at a cost of less than $6 million. That technology rivals Microsoft ( MSFT ) -backed OpenAI's ChatGPT and Meta's (META) Llama 3.1, Wedbush Securities said in a Monday note.

"We remain committed to balancing operational discipline with continued investments in our cloud and AI infrastructure," Hood said Wednesday.