🤖 Microsoft’s $245.1 Billion in Revenue: A Closer Look

Subscribe | AI Toolkit | Meet The Team

Welcome back AI enthusiasts!

In today’s AI Report:

• 🔍Microsoft’s $245.1 Billion in Revenue: A Closer Look

• 🌲Black Forest Labs Unveils FLUX 1.1 Pro

• ⚔️Google DeepMind Develops “Reasoning AI” to Rival OpenAI

• 🛠Trending Tools

• 💰Funding Frontlines

• 💼Who’s Hiring?

Read Time: 3 minutes

🗞RECENT NEWS

MICROSOFT

🔍Microsoft’s $245.1 Billion in Revenue: A Closer Look

According to The Wall Street Journal, Microsoft’s AI story is getting complicated. Investors are asking themselves, “What will Microsoft use all this AI infrastructure for?”

Key Details:

How It Started

• In January 2024, Microsoft reached $3 trillion in market value by capitalizing on the AI craze through partnering with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

• For example, Microsoft integrated OpenAI’s GPT-4 into Bing Search to reignite the company’s search engine.

• Stifel analyst Brad Reback explained: “I think it’s AI optimism for Microsoft. Apple doesn’t seem to have the same clear AI story.”

Total Revenue and Net Income

• During Microsoft’s Q4 FY2024 Earnings Conference Call, the company showcased that Total Revenue increased by 16% to $245.1 billion with a Net Income of $88.1 billion.

• Total Revenue is the total amount of money a company earns from selling products or services.

• Net Income is the total amount of money left after subtracting all expenses from Total Revenue.

Burning Cash

• However, Microsoft’s ambition to maintain its lead in the AI race is proving expensive. Microsoft’s Capital Expenditures (CapEx) reached $55.7 billion, 23% of the company’s Total Revenue.

• CapEx refers to the money a company uses to purchase, improve, or maintain long-term assets.

• Microsoft is spending billions of dollars on AI infrastructure (e.g., hardware, software, and networking) to provide computing power essential for AI-enabled applications.

What Will It Yield?

• However, there’s no understanding of what this spending will actually yield. Microsoft hasn’t disclosed any specific revenue from AI.

• So, what will Microsoft use all this AI infrastructure for, and how will it generate returns?

• Microsoft’s stock market value has grown less than 11% this year, making it the only Big Tech company to perform worse than the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average.

🩺 PULSE CHECK

BLACK FOREST LABS

🌲Black Forest Labs Unveils FLUX 1.1 Pro

Black Forest Labs unveiled FLUX 1.1 Pro, a new suite of text-to-image AI models that rival current leaders like OpenAI’s DALL-E 3 and Google’s Imagen 3.

Key Details:

• FLUX 1.1 Pro generates detailed, diverse, and style-specific images, opening new creative avenues for creators, developers, and enterprises.

• FLUX 1.1 Pro offers an ideal balance between generating high-quality images and Inference Speed, enabling more efficient workflows.

• Inference Speed refers to how quickly FLUX 1.1 Pro can process user queries (i.e., prompts) to generate high-quality images.

• FLUX 1.1 Pro dominates the Hugging Face Artificial Analysis Image Arena Leaderboard, which uses 45,000 human image preferences that measure usability, compatibility, and computing power to rank text-to-image AI models.

• Black Forest Labs also released BFL API for developers. APIs enable developers to add AI features to their applications without having to build AI algorithms from scratch.

Why It’s Important:

• Competition drives innovation, and FLUX 1.1 Pro’s entry into the AI image generation market will likely spur rapid advancements that benefit consumers.

• BFL API empowers developers to integrate FLUX 1.1 Pro into their applications. This accessibility will foster the creation of innovative AI-powered tools within developer communities.

AI RESEARCH

⚔️Google DeepMind Develops “Reasoning AI” to Rival OpenAI

Google DeepMind is reportedly making significant strides in developing AI models with advanced reasoning capabilities to solve complex multistep problems using “a series of intermediate reasoning steps.”

This process requires a Reasoning Engine, which creates specific rules and datasets to mimic a human’s decision-making capabilities and problem-solving capacity.

Google DeepMind is also refining a Chain-of-Thoughts (CoT) framework, which allows AI models to “decompose complex problems into intermediate steps that are solved individually.”

CoT leads to more accurate responses, improved AI model transparency with decision-making, and the ability to identify errors that occur when generating responses.

OpenAI recently unveiled “OpenAI o1,” a new series of AI models designed to spend more time thinking before they respond. It features a Reasoning Engine and CoT structure. Google DeepMind researchers are worried they’ve fallen behind.

Big Tech Giants are rushing to develop AI models that go beyond the traditional conversational chatbot. The new industry standard is developing AI applications you “view as a really smart friend that helps you solve problems.”

🛠TRENDING TOOLS

🧶BaseAI builds serverless autonomous AI agents with memory.

🧠Lookie consumes, organizes, and manages your YouTube knowledge.

🐝buzzabout gives AI-driven insights from billions of social media discussions.

⏱Tackle automatically tracks your time to align everyday actions with overall tasks.

💵costgpt generates cost constraints and time estimates for your software projects.

🔮Browse our always Up-To-Date AI Tools Database.

💰FUNDING FRONTLINES

• Apono raises a $15.5M Series A to transform secure cloud access.

• Avarra secures a $8M Seed Round for AI-based avatar sales training.

• ElevenLabs, a startup that makes AI tools for audio applications, may soon be valued at $3B.

💼WHO’S HIRING?

• CloudFlare (Austin, TX): Software Engineering Intern, Summer 2025

• Shield AI (Dallas, TX): Embedded Software Engineering Intern, Summer 2025

• Waymo (Mountain View, CA): Fleet Infrastructure, Commercialization Intern, Summer 2025

• Amazon (New York, NY): Software Development “Dev” Engineer Intern, Automated Reasoning, Summer 2025

• NVIDIA (Santa Clara, CA): Software Engineer for Cloud Platforms, Deep Learning {DL}, New College Grad 2024

🤖PROMPT OF THE DAY

BUSINESS IDEAS

💡Validate a Business Idea

Help me design a comprehensive validation plan for [Business Idea] with [Product/Service] in [Industry] with [Target Audience].

Confirm that my business idea addresses a genuine problem. In other words, explore whether my product or service solves a real problem for my target audience and if they’re willing to pay for it.

Business Idea = [Insert Here]

Product/Service = [Insert Here]

Industry = [Insert Here]

Target Audience = [Insert Here]

📒FINAL NOTE

FEEDBACK

❤️TAIP Review of The Day

REFER & EARN

🎉Your Friends Learn, You Earn!

You currently have 0 referrals, only 1 away from receiving ⚙️Ultimate Prompt Engineering Guide.

Refer 3 friends to learn how to 👷‍♀️Build Custom Versions of OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Copy and paste this link to friends: https://theaipulse.beehiiv.com/subscribe?ref=PLACEHOLDER