Microsoft (MSFT 1.67%) shares are trading at their cheapest valuation in years.
Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) shares fell 1.5% on Friday, extending a difficult year for the software giant as investors continued to weigh heavy artificial intelligence spending against the company's long-term growth prospects. The stock has declined more than 20% in 2026 and nearly 23% over the past year, even as Microsoft has continued investing aggressively in AI infrastructure and Azure cloud services.
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction) has become one of the most closely watched stocks in the S&P 500 as it grinds sideways through a rough first half of 2026.
Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella criticized Anthropic's Fable 5 model in an internal meeting with Copilot engineers, saying the AI's refusal of certain requests feels "editorially controlled" and "doesn't make sense," CNBC reported. "If you use Fable, when it refuses for any random thing, it just is like, when was the last time you had a creation tool that was so editorially controlled?
Nvidia made an outside hire to replace billionaire sales chief Jay Puri. 26-year Microsoft veteran Nick Parker has been tapped to lead its next phase.
Watch how Microsoft's bet on the future of gaming led to the biggest restructuring in Xbox history.
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Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META | META Price Prediction) and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) both delivered strong quarters on April 29, 2026, yet their insider behavior since tells wildly different stories.
Microsoft (MSFT) trades at a rare discount, down 30% from its high, despite robust ≈17% EPS growth and sector-wide SaaS weakness. I see the market mispricing MSFT's AI integration; Office 365 remains entrenched while Copilot and Claude enhance, not disrupt, its software stack. Azure's 40% YoY growth is capacity-constrained, but management expects these limits to resolve by end-FY26, potentially accelerating growth into FY27.
Microsoft's cybersecurity business is developing more artificial intelligence (AI) security products, cutting back on some of its more traditional security products, and consolidating engineering teams, which has led to several hundred layoffs, The Information reported Wednesday (July 15), citing unnamed sources.
Microsoft appears to be prepping its sales team to get more competitive with the other major players in the AI industry.
On Tuesday, Microsoft patched a historic record number of security bugs across its product lines, in large part due to the use of AI to help the company and external researchers to discover bugs.