Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella (L) returns to the stage after a pre-recorded interview during the Microsoft Build conference opening keynote in Seattle, Washington on May 19, 2025.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
Microsoft stock sank more than 2% on Wednesday following a report that the company has lowered quotas for artificial intelligence software sales after many of its salespeople missed growth goals in the last fiscal year.
Such a move is rare for Microsoft, according to The Information, which cited two salespeople in Azure’s cloud unit.
The sales lag occurred for Microsoft’s Foundry product, an Azure enterprise platform where companies can build and manage AI agents, the news site said.
AI agents can carry out a series of actions for a user or organization autonomously.
Microsoft declined to comment on the report.
The AI boom has presented opportunities for businesses to add efficiencies and streamline tasks, with the companies that build these agents touting the power of the tools to take on work and allow workers to do more.
OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Salesforce, Amazon and others all have their own tools to create and manage these AI assistants.
But the adoption of these tools by traditional businesses hasn’t seen the same surge as other parts of the AI ecosystem.
Less than a fifth of salespeople in one U.S. Azure unit met the Foundry sales growth target of 50%, according to The Information.
In another unit, the quota was set to double Foundry sales, The Information reported. The quota was dropped to 50% after most salespeople didn’t meet it.
The Information noted AI adoption struggles at private equity firm Carlyle last year, in which the tools wouldn’t reliably connect data from other places.
Read the full story from The Information here.
