Will Microsoft Stock Climb as Azure AI Services Gain Traction?

Microsoft's MSFT Azure AI services are gaining meaningful enterprise traction, and the momentum is increasingly shaping the investment case for the stock. In the second quarter of fiscal 2026, Azure and other cloud services revenues surged 39% year over year, or 38% in constant currency, driving Intelligent Cloud segment revenues to $32.9 billion, up 29%.

The platform underpinning that growth continues to evolve rapidly. In February 2026, Microsoft Foundry — the company's unified AI development platform — reached a significant milestone with the general availability of its core REST API v1, enabling production-ready deployments across Python, NET, JavaScript and Java SDKs. The same month, Microsoft introduced Durable Agent Orchestration, pairing Azure Durable Functions with its Agent Framework to build enterprise agents capable of pausing for human approval and resuming without data loss, a capability directly targeting regulated-industry workflows. Microsoft also announced enhancements to its Sovereign Cloud platform, enabling large AI models to run fully disconnected on local hardware, broadening addressable demand among government, financial and healthcare customers with strict data-residency requirements.

On the adoption side, Microsoft 365 Copilot reached 15 million paid seats, up more than 160% year over year, with record seat additions in the quarter. Over 80% of Fortune 500 companies now have active agents built on Copilot Studio or Agent Builder, reinforcing the breadth of enterprise penetration.

The near-term challenge, however, remains supply. Management acknowledged that customer demand continues to exceed available capacity, even as the company added nearly one gigawatt of total infrastructure in the quarter alone. For the fiscal third quarter, Microsoft guided Azure growth of 37% to 38% in constant currency, with Microsoft Cloud gross margin expected at roughly 65%, pressured by continued AI infrastructure investments. Whether MSFT stock can sustain its climb will depend on how effectively rising capacity translates to improved margin efficiency.

How Amazon and Google Stack Up

Microsoft's rivals are pressing ahead with comparable AI cloud ambitions. Amazon's AMZN AWS posted revenues of $35.6 billion in fourth-quarter 2025, up 24% year over year — its fastest growth rate in 13 quarters — as Amazon committed approximately $200 billion in capital expenditures for 2026. Amazon's scale on an annualized basis remains the largest in the industry. Alphabet GOOGL-owned Google Cloud, meanwhile, delivered fourth-quarter 2025 revenues of $17.7 billion, up 48% year over year, driven by enterprise AI infrastructure and AI solutions demand, with Google Cloud ending 2025 at an annual revenue run rate exceeding $70 billion. Google's sharper growth rate reflects a smaller but rapidly expanding base, while Amazon's AWS breadth underscores entrenched enterprise relationships across both AI and core cloud workloads.

MSFT’s Share Price Performance, Valuation & Estimates

MSFT shares have lost 19% in the past six-month period, outperforming the Zacks Computer – Software industry's decline of  23.9% but underperforming the Zacks Computer and Technology sector's return of 3.2%.

MSFT’s 6-Month Price Performance

From a valuation standpoint, MSFT stock is currently trading at a forward 12-month Price/Sales ratio of 8.45X compared with the industry’s 7.11X. MSFT has a Value Score of D.

MSFT’s Valuation

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for MSFT’s fiscal 2026 earnings is pegged at $16.97 per share. The estimate indicates 24.41% year-over-year growth.

Microsoft Corporation Price and Consensus

Microsoft Corporation price-consensus-chart | Microsoft Corporation Quote

Microsoft currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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