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 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.

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

Microsoft has made Chinese startup DeepSeek's R1 artificial intelligence model available on its Azure cloud computing platform and GitHub tool for developers, the U.S. company said on Wednesday.

In its own research, DeepSeek said it had “distilled” models from its R1 system based on other open-source systems. Unlike OpenAI’s closed systems, some models such as Meta’s Llama are open-source and freely available for use.

The tech giants vow to barrel ahead despite the jolt from China’s DeepSeek.

"Investing 'very heavily' in capital expenditure and infrastructure is going to be a strategic advantage over time," Mark Zuckerberg said.

Meta has defended its $65bn (£52bn) investment in artificial intelligence (AI) days after US tech stocks wobbled in the wake of Chinese AI app DeepSeek's sudden rise. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said to investors on Wednesday there was a lot to learn from DeepSeek,

Microsoft has tested Wall Street's patience by plunking down huge amounts of cash in pursuit of profits from AI that have yet to satisfy investors.

Microsoft reported slower-than-expected growth in its crucial Azure cloud business on Wednesday despite beating estimates for overall quarterly revenue and increasing use of its cloud services for artificial intelligence.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) shares dropped over 2% in after-hours trading Wednesday, despite the company surpassing Wall Street estimates for its fiscal second-quarter earnings. For the quarter ending Dec.