Real company · filing evidence · no rating
Microsoft (MSFT)
Server useful life. Extended the estimated life of its servers and network equipment from 4 to 6 years in fiscal 2023, which lowers depreciation and raises reported profit. The 10-K gave two reasons: investments in software that made the equipment more efficient to operate, and advances in technology. Its fiscal 2026 10-K states a life of two to six years for servers and network equipment.
Useful-life evidence
Read from 5 10-K and 10-Q filings since 2023. Quotes are the filing’s own words.
Extended 4 → 6 years, effective July 2022
“Due to investments in software that increased efficiencies in how we operate our server and network equipment, as well as advances in technology, we determined we should increase the estimated useful lives of both server and network equipment from four years to six years.”
Stated life in the latest 10-K
“The estimated useful lives of our property and equipment are generally as follows: software developed or acquired for internal use, three years ; servers and network equipment, two to six years ; buildings and improvements, five to 15 years ; leasehold improvements, three to 15 years ; and furniture and equipment, one to 10 years .”
Customer evidence
Read from the latest 10-K and the 1 10-Q after it. Risk-factor sentences (may, could, if) are skipped, so only links the filing states as fact count.
No concentration statement or financing link found.
Claim evidence · earnings releases
8-K Exhibit 99.1, narrative text only: tables, safe harbor and the “About” paragraph removed. The counts cover the last eight releases, oldest first.
| Filed | AI / 1k words | Quantified |
|---|---|---|
| 2025-01-29 | 9.1 | 3/4 |
| 2025-04-30 | 6.2 | 1/3 |
| 2025-07-30 | 2.6 | 1/2 |
| 2025-10-29 | 3.2 | 0/3 |
| 2026-01-28 | 4.2 | 0/3 |
| 2026-04-29 | 4.3 | 1/3 |
| 2026-07-29 | 1.7 | 1/2 |
| 2026-10-28 | 0.0 | 0/0 |
Quarterly results
Each quarter links to the filing it came from. Q4 values are derived from the 10-K less the nine-month 10-Q.
| Quarter | Revenue | OCF | Capex | FCF |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2024-12-31 | $69.6B | $22.3B | $15.8B | $6.0B |
| 2025-03-31 | $70.1B | $37.0B | $16.7B | $19.9B |
| 2025-06-30 | $76.4B | $42.6B | $17.1B | $24.9B |
| 2025-09-30 | $77.7B | $45.1B | $19.4B | $25.0B |
| 2025-12-31 | $81.3B | $35.8B | $29.9B | $5.2B |
| 2026-03-31 | $82.9B | $46.7B | $30.9B | $15.0B |
| 2026-06-30 | $90.0B | $55.4B | $35.8B | $18.7B |
| 2026-09-30 | $92.3B | $58.0B | $39.4B | $17.6B |
What Microsoft’s filings show
Microsoft reported revenue of $346.4 billion over the four quarters to 2026-09-30, up 17.9% on the four quarters before. Operating cash flow was $195.9 billion and capital expenditure $135.9 billion, or 39.2% of revenue, leaving free cash flow of $56.5 billion.
Its filings since 2023 record one change to the estimated useful life of its servers and network equipment: extended from 4 to 6 years, effective July 2022. The latest 10-K states a life of 2 to 6 years for servers and network equipment.
In the latest quarter, ending 2026-09-30, revenue was $92.3 billion: up 2.5% on the quarter before and up 18.8% on the same quarter a year earlier. Over the 8 quarters in the table, quarterly revenue ran from $69.6 billion to $92.3 billion.
Capital expenditure in the latest quarter was $39.4 billion (42.7% of that quarter’s revenue), up 103.0% on the same quarter a year earlier. Operating cash flow in the quarter was $58.0 billion.
Across its last 8 earnings releases (2025-01-29 to 2026-10-28), 20 sentences mention AI and 7 of them carry a figure, about 35%. The four most recent average 2.5 AI mentions per 1,000 words, against 5.3 in the first four.
How to read this page
Reading the server useful-life evidence
When a company buys servers and network equipment, it spreads the cost over the years it expects to use them. That estimate, the useful life, is a judgment the company makes and discloses in the notes to its financial statements. Lengthening it spreads the same cost over more years, which lowers depreciation expense and raises reported operating income without any change in cash spent.
Since 2020 most of the largest cloud operators have lengthened their server lives, typically from three or four years to five or six, citing software and operating improvements that kept equipment in service longer. AI accelerators are a newer and faster-moving class of hardware, which is why changes to these estimates are watched closely.
These pages read each 10-K and 10-Q filed since 2023 for statements about the useful life of servers and network equipment: the change, the years before and after, when it took effect, whether it applies to the whole fleet or part of it, and the effect on income where the company discloses one. Each reading quotes the sentence it came from and links to the filing.
Reading the customer evidence
US accounting rules require a company to disclose when a single customer accounts for 10% or more of its revenue. For companies that sell AI hardware and capacity, those disclosures show how much of the business depends on a handful of very large buyers, often the same cloud operators and AI labs.
Some suppliers also help finance their customers: an investment in a customer, revenue from a related party, or warrants for the supplier’s own shares that vest as the customer buys more. These arrangements are disclosed in the notes and in 8-K filings. They are not unusual on their own, but they mean part of the revenue is connected to money or equity flowing the other way.
These pages read the latest 10-K and the 10-Qs filed after it for both kinds of statement, quote each one and link to the filing. Sentences in the risk factors (“may”, “could”, “if”) are skipped, so only arrangements the filing states as fact are shown.
Reading the earnings-release language
Each quarter, US companies file their earnings press release with the SEC as an exhibit to a Form 8-K. The release is the company’s own account of the quarter, written for investors and the press. These pages count how often it mentions artificial intelligence, after removing the financial tables, the forward-looking-statements boilerplate, the “About the company” paragraph and the company’s own name.
Two counts are shown for each of the last eight releases. The first is AI mentions per 1,000 words of narrative text, which makes long and short releases comparable. The second is how many of the sentences that mention AI also carry a figure: a dollar amount, a percentage, a count of customers. “AI demand drove record data-centre revenue of $X” and “we continue to lead in AI” are both AI sentences; only the first gives a reader something to check against the financial statements.
The counts use generic AI vocabulary only, not product names, so companies that brand their AI differently are counted the same way. Example sentences from the latest release are quoted with and without a figure, so the counting can be checked by reading them.
Reading the quarterly results
Every figure in the quarterly table comes from the company’s own XBRL filings with the SEC: the structured data attached to each 10-Q and 10-K. Companies report the fourth quarter only as part of the full year, so the fourth-quarter figures are the annual 10-K total less the first nine months reported in the third-quarter 10-Q. Each quarter links to the filing it came from.
For software and services companies the table shows revenue and gross margin: revenue less the direct cost of delivering the product, as a share of revenue. AI features that run on rented computing show up in cost of revenue, so a product that leans harder on AI with no change in price tends to show in the gross margin before it shows anywhere else.
For companies that build or sell the hardware and capacity AI runs on, the table shows revenue, operating cash flow, capital expenditure and free cash flow (operating cash flow less capital expenditure and finance-lease principal payments). Data-centre spending appears as capital expenditure long before it appears as revenue, so cash flow during a build-out often looks very different from reported profit.
The three filings behind the evidence
The 10-K is the annual report. It holds the audited financial statements, the notes that explain the accounting choices behind them (including how long equipment is depreciated and which customers matter most), the risk factors, and Item 1, the company’s own description of its business and products. The 10-Q is the quarterly report: reviewed rather than audited financial statements for each of the first three quarters, with shorter notes.
The earnings release is filed as Exhibit 99.1 to a Form 8-K on the day a company reports its results. It is not audited and is written to present the quarter in the company’s preferred terms, which is why its language is worth reading next to the financial statements that follow it.
All three are free on the SEC’s EDGAR system. The financial figures are taken from the XBRL data companies attach to their 10-Q and 10-K, which tags each number with a standard accounting concept so that companies can be read the same way.
Questions about Microsoft’s filings
How often does Microsoft mention AI in its earnings releases?
In its four most recent earnings releases, Microsoft averaged 2.5 mentions of AI per 1,000 words of narrative text, compared with 5.3 in the four releases before them. Of the 20 AI sentences across all 8 releases, 7 include a figure such as a dollar amount or percentage.
Has Microsoft changed the useful life of its servers?
Yes. Extended from 4 to 6 years, effective July 2022. Each change is quoted on this page from the filing that disclosed it.
How much is Microsoft spending on capital expenditure?
$135.9 billion over the four quarters to 2026-09-30, equal to 39.2% of revenue over the same period, according to its 10-Q and 10-K filings.
How much free cash flow does Microsoft generate?
Over the four quarters to 2026-09-30, Microsoft reported operating cash flow of $195.9 billion. After capital expenditure and principal payments on finance leases, free cash flow was $56.5 billion, or 16.3% of revenue. The quarterly figures are in the table on this page, each linked to its filing.
Where does this data come from?
From Microsoft’s filings on SEC EDGAR: the XBRL financial data in its 10-Q and 10-K reports, the text of those reports, and the earnings releases it files as exhibits to Form 8-K. The data was last pulled on 2026-10-30. Every quote and every quarter on this page links to its source filing.
Is this a rating or a recommendation?
No. This page shows what Microsoft disclosed and nothing else: no rating, score or view on the stock. It is part of a prototype and is not investment research.
Prototype · not investment research. Quotes are the filing’s own words, found by rule-based readers; each links to the filing so it can be checked. This page shows evidence only: the gauge’s rating for real companies is not published while the method is calibrated.