Microsoft has lowered gross sales progress targets for its AI agent merchandise after many salespeople missed their quotas within the fiscal yr ending in June, in response to a report Wednesday from The Data. The adjustment is reportedly uncommon for Microsoft, and it comes after the corporate missed quite a lot of bold gross sales objectives for its AI choices.
AI brokers are specialised implementations of AI language fashions designed to carry out multistep duties autonomously fairly than merely responding to single prompts. So-called “agentic” options have been central to Microsoft’s 2025 gross sales pitch: At its Construct convention in Could, the corporate declared that it has entered “the period of AI brokers.”
The corporate has promised clients that brokers might automate complicated duties, corresponding to producing dashboards from gross sales knowledge or writing buyer stories. At its Ignite convention in November, Microsoft announced new options like Phrase, Excel, and PowerPoint brokers in Microsoft 365 Copilot, together with instruments for constructing and deploying brokers via Azure AI Foundry and Copilot Studio. However because the yr attracts to an in depth, that promise has confirmed more durable to ship than the corporate anticipated.
In keeping with The Data, one US Azure gross sales unit set quotas for salespeople to extend buyer spending on a product referred to as Foundry, which helps clients develop AI purposes, by 50 p.c. Lower than a fifth of salespeople in that unit met their Foundry gross sales progress targets. In July, Microsoft lowered these targets to roughly 25 p.c progress for the present fiscal yr. In one other US Azure unit, most salespeople failed to satisfy an earlier quota to double Foundry gross sales, and Microsoft reduce their quotas to 50 p.c for the present fiscal yr.
