Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella (left) returns to the stage after a prerecorded interview during the opening keynote address at the Microsoft Build conference on May 19, 2025 in Seattle, Washington.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
microsoft The company retracted a report on Wednesday that said the company lowered its sales growth targets for artificial intelligence software after many salespeople missed them in the previous fiscal year.
The company’s stock initially fell more than 2% on the news, but has since rebounded.
A Microsoft spokesperson said the company is not reducing sales quotas or targets for salespeople.
The sales delay occurred in Microsoft’s Foundry product, the Azure enterprise platform that allows businesses to build and manage AI agents, The Information reported, citing two sales representatives in Azure’s cloud division.
AI agents can autonomously perform a series of actions on a user or organization.
The AI boom presents companies with the opportunity to increase efficiency and streamline tasks, and the companies building these agents are touting the power of their tools to take over the work and empower employees to do more.
open AI, googlehumanity, sales force, Amazon Companies such as all have their own tools for creating and managing these AI assistants.
However, adoption of these tools by traditional enterprises hasn’t seen the same surge as other parts of the AI ecosystem.
In one U.S. Azure division, fewer than one-fifth of salespeople met Foundry’s 50% sales growth goal, according to The Information.
In another department, quotas were set at twice the foundry’s sales, The Information reported. The quota was lowered to 50% because most salespeople did not meet their quota.
The Information noted that private equity firm Carlyle struggled to implement AI last year, with its tools failing to reliably connect data from elsewhere.
Read the full text of The Information here.
