STORY: Microsoft said on Tuesday it was laying off less than 3% of its workforce, or around 6,000 employees, as the technology giant looks to rein in costs while funneling billions of dollars into its ambitious bet on artificial intelligence.
Krawez said the layoffs announcement “is prudent and will feed into [Microsoft’s] increasing margins.”
The move comes weeks after Microsoft posted stronger-than-expected growth in its cloud-computing business, Azure, and blowout results in the latest quarter, calming investor worries in an uncertain economy.
“You saw Azure growth of 35% in constant currency, which was phenomenal, well above Amazon, and AWS was up about 16%. So doubling Amazon growth is fantastic,” said Krawez.
“They had stronger growth also than the third competitor, which is Google’s cloud business,” said Krawez. “We like Microsoft because it has a lot of strong recurring revenue, which is a good thing to have in this marketplace where there’s a lot of volatility, and we’re a bit worried about a potential recession.”
