At the close of trading on 29/1, Microsoft's stock fell 10% following a Q4/2025 financial report that disappointed some investors. This marked the stock's sharpest decline since march 2020. The drop erased 357 billion USD from Microsoft's market capitalization, bringing it to 3.220 billion USD.

Logo Microsoft at MWC exhibition, february 2023. Photo: Luu Quy

Revenue for Azure and other cloud services in Q4/2025 increased by 39%, which was lower than StreetAccount's forecast of 39,4%. The More Personal Computing segment, encompassing products like Windows and Xbox, generated 14,3 billion USD, a 3% decrease compared to the same period last year. For this quarter, Microsoft forecasts this segment to record revenue of only 12,6 billion USD, falling short of StreetAccount's expectation of 13,7 billion USD.

Microsoft also anticipates Azure's growth to remain stable this quarter, at a rate of 37-38%. Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood suggested that cloud segment results could have been higher if the company had allocated more data center infrastructure to customers, rather than prioritizing internal needs. "If all the GPUs deployed in the past two quarters had been allocated to Azure, growth would have exceeded 40%," she stated.

On CNBC, Ben Reitzes, an analyst at Melius Research, argued that Microsoft needs to accelerate data center construction. "I believe they are facing an implementation issue with Azure. Microsoft needs to build facilities a bit faster," he said.

Analysts at UBS questioned Microsoft's decision to integrate the AI assistant Copilot into Microsoft 365 recently, especially since the product has not been as successful as OpenAI's ChatGPT. "Microsoft 365 has not seen accelerated revenue growth thanks to Copilot. The AI market appears increasingly crowded and requires significant investment. We believe Microsoft needs to prove these are sound investments," UBS commented.

Microsoft is also facing increasing pressure due to its substantial investment in OpenAI. The startup is currently losing money and losing momentum in the AI race. "Microsoft's deep relationship with OpenAI has strengthened its leadership position in enterprise artificial intelligence, but it also creates concentration risk," concluded Zavier Wong, a market analyst at eToro.

Ha Thu (according to CNBC, Reuters)