Microsoft Is Done Watching AI From the Sidelines
Microsoft helped ignite the AI revolution, then somehow ended up playing catch-up. With rivals eating into Copilot’s turf, plunged 24% earlier this year, making it the biggest laggard among Big Tech peers. Although it’s a rough spot for the company that bankrolled the industry, some analysts believe the worst may be over.
- Microsoft is rolling out always-on autonomous agents — designed to manage admin work, execute tasks, and run role-specific bots for sales, marketing, and accounting.
- The push is a direct response to growing overlap with OpenAI and Anthropic — with the latter’s Claude now operating natively inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.
Signs of life: With bouncing back ~15% from its March lows, Bernstein analyst Mark Moerdler calls the bottom. He points to a natural six-month lag between Microsoft’s heavy hardware spend and actual revenue, expecting Azure growth to pick up in the next two quarters. The new Copilot agents arrive right on cue, giving enterprises a reason to deepen their cloud usage. After years of betting on everyone else’s AI, Microsoft hopes it isn’t too late on cashing in its own chips.
