Microsoft naming conventions are getting an AI makeover—and they sound very sci-fi

Microsoft is switching up its reporting structure for the AI era. As of the next fiscal quarter, its current three reporting segments—Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing—will be replaced with two brand new ones: Devices and Consumer, and Agents and Infra, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Devices and Consumer is a pretty self-explanatory segment, including revenue from Microsoft’s customer-facing products like Xbox and Windows devices, as well as from LinkedIn and search advertising.

But Agents and Infra is a more obtuse title. It’s a bit of a catch-all for revenue from Microsoft’s other products, including its AI models, cloud infrastructure, and Microsoft 365 (including its Copilot features). The change means Microsoft will be disclosing quarterly revenue for its cloud-computing platform Azure for the first time.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says the change to the company’s reporting structure is meant to reflect how artificial intelligence is shaking up the way Microsoft operates.

“There’s no question Al represents a profound shift in both technology and business,” he said during a recent presentation. “To reflect this and provide increased transparency to investors, we are updating our financial reporting to mirror how the business is operating, how we allocate resources, and where we are headed.”

“This integrated architecture across Agents and Infra is how we think about engaging with customers and driving their outcomes, building products, and monetization,” Nadella continued. “It’s no longer about building or selling one app or service, but about connecting the entire trajectory of a ‘job to be done.’”

Microsoft’s history of wacky words

Agents and Infra sounds more like a video game subtitle than a department at one of the world’s biggest tech companies. But it’s far from the first time Microsoft has gotten . . . ahem, creative with its corporate vocabulary.

As early as the 1980s, Microsoft was introducing bizarre new terms to the tech world. The phrase “eating your own dogfood” (or “dogfooding”)—meaning the practice of companies testing their own products internally before putting them out to consumers—was reportedly coined by Jim Harris, Microsoft’s first head of original equipment manufacturer (OEM) sales.

Microsoft’s users have also contributed to its lexical legacy. Earlier this year, the company cracked down on users spamming the term “Microslop”—a portmanteau of “Microsoft” and “AI slop” used to rag on the company’s least successful AI endeavors—in one of its Discord servers.