Microsoft Q4: Azure up 43% as GitHub outage hits developers worldwide

Microsoft's fiscal Q4 underscored that AI demand is still translating into cloud growth: Azure revenue rose 43%, and the company continued to weave Copilot deeper across its portfolio — Microsoft 365, GitHub, Security Copilot, and Dynamics. The August Copilot update reinforced that push with model choice (letting Copilot route tasks to multiple frontier models including OpenAI's latest and Anthropic's Claude), Cowork workflow automation, and general availability of Copilot Notebooks.

Beneath the strong headline number, analysts raised two familiar concerns. First, capital expenditure keeps climbing to fund AI infrastructure, pressuring free cash flow. Second, the incremental monetization of Copilot remains murky — deep integration is easy to demonstrate, but attributing clean revenue uplift to it is harder, and investors want evidence that Copilot seats convert to durable spend.

The quarter's shine was dented by reliability. A GitHub outage on August 17 disrupted developers worldwide; Microsoft identified the source shortly after 9:30 a.m. and restored most services by 10 a.m., but Copilot lingered as an active incident. It was the latest in a string of reliability setbacks for Microsoft's coding platform, feeding developer frustration about depending on a single provider for source control and AI assistance.

The throughline for readers: Microsoft's AI cloud engine is running hot, but the market is now scrutinizing durability of demand, cost discipline, and platform reliability rather than just growth. Watch Copilot monetization disclosures and GitHub's incident cadence in coming weeks.