Nadella said he was confident that competitors, which include the likes of Google, AWS and IBM, were less advanced in working out how software could interact with people on a seemingly human level.

“There are a few companies that are at the cutting-edge of AI, in whichever way you look at it,” Mr Nadella said.

“But when you just look at the capability around speech recognition, who has the state of the art? Microsoft does … What is the state of the art with image recognition? Microsoft again, and those are not subjective they are judged by objective criteria.”

Mr Nadella said Microsoft would continue to look to both work with and acquire start-ups where possible.

Microsoft’s first priority with start-ups was to provide them with services, but that it would look to acquire when in appeared feasible.

“If this fourth industrial revolution is going to truly create surplus that goes beyond the West Coast of the United States then you have to have start-ups that are vibrant in every part of the world,” he said.

 

Source: Financial Review