Microsoft significantly exceeded earnings expectations for the June quarter and disclosed its standalone annual Azure revenue for the first time — providing new clarity into how it stacks up against Amazon and Google in the cloud.

Microsoft stock surged on better-than-expected financial results for its latest quarter. The beat was driven in part by double-digit revenue growth in the tech firm’s closely watched Azure cloud business.

Microsoft Corp. said it will spend more than $30 billion in the current quarter to build out the data centers powering its artificial intelligence services.Investors, applauding accelerating growth in the company’s cloud-computing unit,