(Reuters) -Britain's Sage Group on Thursday maintained its revenue forecast for fiscal 2025 after the software firm posted 10% growth in first-quarter underlying revenue, driven by higher demand, especially in North America, its fastest growing region.

The company has invested heavily in cloud services in recent years and it is now counting on surging demand for artificial intelligence products and services to deploy generative AI in its offerings to help small business owners.

"Sage has made a strong start to the year, achieving broad-based revenue growth in line with expectations, despite the ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty," Chief Financial Officer Jonathan Howell said in a statement.

The company, whose accountancy software is used by millions of small businesses, rolled out its "Sage Copilot" generative AI-powered assistant in December.

The model can help businesses track various tasks and even automate some items.

The launch and rising popularity of a free AI assistant by Chinese startup DeepSeek, which claims to use less data at a fraction of current costs, has prompted investors to dump tech stocks globally this week.

Still, shares of FTSE 100 component Sage are up 5% so far this year.

The stock had been hovering around record highs in recent weeks, with most analysts bullish on Sage, citing attractive earnings growth prospects and progress in rolling out generative AI copilots.

Sage had previously forecast organic total revenue growth of 9% or above for the year ending September.

That compares with analysts' estimate of 9.2%, according to a company-compiled consensus.

The company posted underlying total revenue of 612 million pounds ($760.84 million) for the three months ended Dec. 31, with North America reporting growth of 11%

($1 = 0.8044 pounds)

(Reporting by Pushkala Aripaka in Bengaluru; Editing by Sonia Cheema and Jan Harvey)

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