By Stephen Nellis and Deborah Mary Sophia
(Reuters) -Microsoft on Wednesday forecast disappointing growth in its cloud computing business, sending its shares down 4.5% in after-hours trading as investors worry about big spending, elusive artificial intelligence revenue and competition from cheaper AI models from China.
Azure results for the fiscal second quarter also fell below Wall Street expectations. Despite beating quarterly overall sales estimates, investors want better results from the hundreds of billions of dollars that Wall Street heavyweights have been spending to build AI data centers and infuse their products with the emerging technology.