July 29 Reuters Microsoft investors will have one big question when the tech giant reports earnings on Tuesday has growth in its Azure cloudcomputing business picked up enough to justify the billions of dollars being spent on artificial intelligence infrastructure?

Widely seen as the frontrunner in the race to make money from AI, thanks to its tieup with ChatGPT maker OpenAI, Microsoft is expected to report that Azure39;s growth stayed steady quarteroverquarter at about 31 between April and June, according to data from Visible Alpha.

That would be inline with the company39;s forecast, but investors are expecting a bigger contribution from its AI business in the fiscal fourth quarter after it accounted for 7 percentage points of Azure39;s growth in the first three months of the year.

Microsoft39;s capital spending likely surged about 53 yearoveryear to 13.64 billion in the period, according to 16 analysts polled by LSEG. A big step up from the 10.95 billion in expenditure it recorded in the previous quarter.

Fears that runaway spending by tech giants on data centers would yield little payoff in the short term have dogged the U.S. stock market this month amid signs that Wall Street may have become too optimistic about earnings growth.

Shares of Googleparent Alphabet fell more than 5 last week after the company reported a quarterly capital spending that exceeded estimates by nearly 1 billion, while the revenue boost from AI integrations remained modest, sparking a…