“Despite these constraints, and the continued need to balance incoming supply, we expect Azure growth to show modest acceleration in the second half of the calendar year, compared with the first half.”

In context

“tial increase includes roughly $5 billion from higher component pricing as well as the impact from finance leases, which add variability given full value is recorded in the period of lease commencement. For calendar year 2026, we expect the mix of short-lived assets to remain similar to Q3. We expect to invest roughly $190 billion in capital expenditures, which includes approximately $25 billion from the impact of higher component pricing. We remain confident in the return on these investments given higher demand signals and increasing product usage, as well as the efficiencies we are already driving across the platform. Even with these additional investments and continued efforts to bring GPU, CPU, and storage capacity online faster, we expect to remain constrained at least through 2026. Despite these constraints, and the continued need to balance incoming supply, we expect Azure growth to show modest acceleration in the second half of the calendar year, compared with the first half. Now I would like to share some closing thoughts as we look to next fiscal year. First, we continue to evolve how we operate to increase our pace and agility. Therefore, we expect headcount will decrease year over year. Operating expense growth will be in the mid- to high single digits, reflecting ongoing investments in R&D, inclusive of AI investment in compute, data, and talent to accelerate product innovation. Next, as a reminder, we will lap strong prior-year comparables impacted by Windows 10 end of support, elevated OEM inventory levels, as well as increased Office and server transactional purchasing. Finally, we remain focused on delivering a platform that enables customers to build and run AI solutions and on driving innovation in our first-party AI applications and services. There”