tech
Microsoft drops AI sales targets in half after salespeople miss their quotas
Report: Microsoft declared “the era of AI agents” in May, but enterprise customers aren’t buying.
TL;DR
- Microsoft has lowered sales growth targets for AI agent products.
- Many salespeople missed their quotas for AI products in the fiscal year ending June.
- AI agents are specialized AI language models designed for autonomous multistep tasks.
- Microsoft's sales pitch for 2025 heavily featured AI agents.
- Enterprises may not be willing to pay premium prices for AI agent tools.
- Some employees prefer ChatGPT over Microsoft's Copilot.
- AI agent technology may not be ready for autonomous business work due to confabulation and errors.
- Current AI agents have limitations and can make costly mistakes.
- Microsoft continues to invest heavily in AI infrastructure.
- Much of Microsoft's AI revenue currently comes from AI companies renting cloud infrastructure.