Microsoft will start disclosing quarterly revenue for its Azure cloud business for the first time, providing investors with a clearer picture of its business that competes with Amazon Web Services and Google's cloud platform.

The change, announced in a presentation on Wednesday, is part of a broader shift in Microsoft's reporting structure, as the company trims its operating segments from three to two. The prior structure had been in place since 2015.

Microsoft's Azure unit has been a major beneficiary of the artificial intelligence boom, as customers turn to major cloud infrastructure platforms for access to the AI models needed to develop new agents and other tools. Analysts at Stifel estimated in July that about half of Azure's revenue growth in the 2026 fiscal year came from OpenAI , while Anthropic has also become more reliant on Microsoft's cloud.

"There's no question AI represents a profound shift in both technology and business," CEO Satya Nadella wrote in the presentation. "It is changing what we build and how we operate, and it is blurring the boundaries between our products and reshaping our business models."

Amazon began disclosing revenue from AWS, the market leader, in 2015. Alphabet, which ranks third in cloud, started providing total revenue from Google Cloud Platform and Workspace productivity subscriptions in 2020.

Microsoft, by contrast, has only been providing the year-over-year growth rate for Azure, and started offering actual sales on an annual basis dating back to last year.