Microsoft Financial Results: FY26 Q3


As I say every few months, it’s another bumper quarter for Microsoft with all the numbers getting bigger.

  • Revenue = $82.9 billion (up 18%)
  • Net Income = $31.8 billion (up 23%)
  • Microsoft Cloud = $54.5 billion (up 29%)

Microsoft had Operating Expenses of $17.7 billion this quarter and say they were “primarily driven by continued investments in R&D compute capacity, AI talent, and data“.

Productivity & Business Processes

  • Revenue = $35 billion, up 17%
  • Microsoft 365 Commercial cloud revenue increased 19%
  • Dynamics 365 revenue increased 22%

M365 Copilot is now over 20 million paid seats. That’s a 33% increase over Q2 (where it was 15 million) but still a fraction of the overall customer base.

Paid M365 Commercial seats grew 6% YoY and ARPU increased driven by E5 & M365 Copilot.

Intelligent Cloud

  • Revenue = $34.7 billion, up 30%
  • Azure increased 40%

Earnings Call

Satya Nadella started by saying “We are at the beginning of one of the most consequential platform shifts that will change the entire tech stack as agents proliferate and become the dominant workload.

  • He says there are “Tens of thousands of companies are already managing tens of millions of agents in Agent 365” – frankly, that surprises me.
  • Cosmos DB had 50% YoY revenue growth
  • Microsoft Fabric up to 35,000 paid customers, a 60% YoY increase
  • Copilot Credit spend almost doubled quarter over quarter
  • Nearly 60% of “service customers” are buying consumption credits

I’ve been banging on about consumption billion (aka Pay as You Go) billing for a few years now and it’s definitely where Microsoft (and a lot of the software industry) is going. Amy Hood, MS CFO, said;

“I start to think about it as a license business plus a consumption business, and really applying far more broadly than I think people have thought about that. And so, it starts to mean that over time, bookings will actually also look a little different. It’ll still have that per-seat license logic, but it’ll also have a meter, just like you see in Azure.”

and Satya said:

“seat-based pricing is just entitlement to some consumption”

While I think he means that seat based licenses are effectively a bundle of some consumption packaged up, that certainly sounds like it being a gateway to more consumption charges…which of course it is in many cases.

See more info here – FY26 Q3 – Press Releases – Investor Relations – Microsoft

Microsoft Product Terms: May 2026


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Updated terms to support the launch of Software Assurance in the Microsoft Customer Agreement (MCA/CSP) added

M365 E7 added

Agent 365 added

Windows 365 for Agents add-on for Agent 365 added
Windows 365 for Agents add-on for Microsoft Copilot Studio added

Azure Capacity Blocks added – see more here https://cloudywithachanceoflicensing.com/2026/05/13/microsoft-azure-capacity-blocks/

GitHub Copilot moving to consumption billing


Software developers collaborating with multiple monitors and AI interface holograms in an open office
A group of software developers collaborate around computers with AI interfaces in a modern office

From June 1st, GitHub Copilot usage will start to consume GitHub AI Credits. Microsoft say that, as Copilot use has changed and become more complex, inference costs have increased and they can no longer sustain the current premium request unit (PRU) model.

Copilot features that consume AI credits include Copilot Chat, Copilot CLI, Copilot cloud agent, Copilot Spaces, Spark, and third-party coding agents.

Every Copilot plan will include an amount of GitHub AI Credits, and paid plan users will be able to purchase additional credits if needed. Microsoft say that “usage will be calculated based on token consumption, including input, output, and cached tokens“.

  • Copilot Business: $19/user/month, including $19 in monthly AI Credits
  • Copilot Enterprise: $39/user/month, including $39 in monthly AI Credits

There will be higher credits included for June, July, and August:

  • Copilot Business: $30 in monthly AI Credits
  • Copilot Enterprise: $70 in monthly AI Credits

1 AI credit = $0.01 USD so the standard inclusions are:

PlanTotal AI credits per user per month
Copilot Business1,900
Copilot Enterprise3,900

As is becoming common in FinOps for AI, the choice of models used for tasks will become much more important with this change. For example:

  • GPT 4.1 is $2 per input token and $8 per output token
  • GPT 5.5 is $5 per input token and $30 per output token
  • Claude Haiku 4.5 is $1 per input token and $5 per output token
  • Claude Opus 4.7 is $5 per input token and $25 per output token

Significant price differences for sure! See more here.

Usage will be pooled across an organisation which may help reduce the impact of this, depending how uniformly your teams use these features. A “Preview Bill Experience” has been introduced earlier in May to give users a view of what your consumption bill will look like. (That’s quite a good idea but more than a 1 month run up would have been better).

A few key things to note:

  • Base plan pricing isn’t changing.
  • Code completions and Next Edit suggestions will not consume AI credits.
  • Credits do not roll over from month to month.
  • Fallback experiences will no longer be available.
  • Copilot code review will consume GitHub Actions minutes AND GitHub AI Credits.

See the Microsoft announcement here – GitHub Copilot is moving to usage-based billing – The GitHub Blog

Microsoft Azure Capacity Blocks


Pixel art style cloud above data center buildings with digital data streams connecting them
Digital cloud linking to a modern data center in a pixel art style.

A new addition, Azure Capacity Blocks (ACB):

“allow Customers to purchase a fixed duration block of capacity for a specific Microsoft Azure resource in a specified region, with a scheduled start date in the future.”

They can range from 1 day to 6 months, they are fully paid for upfront, and cannot be cancelled or refunded. Unused portions of ACBs will not be refunded either. Once the term ends, customers “will be evicted from the applicable capacity, and Microsoft will stop Customer’s use of the applicable Microsoft Azure Services.”

When I initially looked, there was a Learn site for this new release but I cannot find it now. Not sure if it’s been removed or I (and ChatGPT) just aren’t looking in the right place all of a sudden 🤔

This new offering must be related to the capacity issues that Microsoft have been having in their Azure datacentres – will it help prevent that from reoccuring?

Microsoft Product Terms: March & April 2026


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March:

Windows 10 ESU Cloud Managed Requirements updated to state “Intune & Entra ID” as license requirements for user access.

Microsoft Entra ID Governance External Identities rebranded to Microsoft Entra ID Governance for Guests

Azure Arc license restrictions updated for Windows Server

April:

SQL Server & Windows Server Subscriptions on MCA/CSP get rights equivalent to Software Assurance (SA)

Windows 10 Enterprise LTSB ESU added

Microsoft Product Terms: February 2026


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Microsoft Defender for EndPoint P2 Add-on for M365 E3 added to MCA for CSP

Microsoft Entra ID P2 Add-on for M365 E3 added to MCA for CSP

Dragon Copilot Physician Practice Per User added to MCA for CSP