It is reported that Microsoft has lowered the assessment target for sales staff’s AI services by as much as 50%.

Recently, technology companies have been vigorously promoting artificial intelligence technology and selling artificial intelligence services to enterprises. Many enterprises are indeed actively embracing artificial intelligence to speed up efficiency, but not all enterprises hope to use artificial intelligence to replace humans. The Information recently released news that Microsoft has experienced a major setback in the sales of enterprise-level artificial intelligence services. Because sales staff have difficulty promoting Microsoft's artificial intelligence services to enterprise customers, Microsoft has had to cut sales quotas by up to 50%.

The sales staff of Microsoft Azure are mainly selling artificial intelligence services to enterprises. Due to the very high performance pressure, many sales staff have difficulty completing the original goals. Microsoft's fiscal year 2026 is from July 1, 2025 to June 30, 2026. The original sales performance set by Microsoft was until the end of June next year.

Microsoft uses the Microsoft Foundry platform to build and manage AI agents. Because multiple Azure sales teams failed to meet the growth goals of AI products (requiring sales staff to increase customer spending on the Foundry platform by 50%), less than 20% of sales staff actually completed the assessment indicators.

Another department’s initial goal was to double customer spending, which was later changed to a 50% increase. However, even after the revised goal, it was still unable to achieve the goal. In the end, some departments adjusted the AI ​​product growth goal to about 25%, which was a half drop from the original 50% growth.

Microsoft also responded to the news, saying that the overall sales quota for AI products has not been reduced, and that related reports mistakenly confused growth targets with sales quotas, which is a misunderstanding of how Microsoft's sales organization operates.

However, even after the relevant news was released, Microsoft's stock price still fell. Many investors are still worried about the sustainability of AI demand, that is, the sales growth rate of AI services may decline rapidly in the future, which is not a good thing for Microsoft and even the entire AI industry.