Microsoft Builds AI Factories at Breakneck Speed — But the Market Isn't Buying the Story Yet
Published on 05/28/2026 at 12:31 | Redaktion boerse-global.de
Microsoft is pouring capital into artificial intelligence at a scale that dwarfs its competitors, yet its stock remains mired in a correction that has erased roughly a quarter of its value from the 52-week peak of €467.45. The shares now trade at around €354.90, down more than 12% since the start of the year, as investors wrestle with a widening gap between the company's bullish infrastructure buildout and persistent doubts about near-term returns.
The disconnect is particularly stark on valuation grounds. Microsoft's forward price-to-earnings multiple has contracted to between 21 and 25 times — well below the five-year median of 34 times — despite a string of robust operational numbers. In the quarter ended March 2026, revenue climbed 18% year-over-year to $82.9 billion, with the Azure cloud business on track to expand 39-40% in constant currency during the current period. The AI segment alone has reached an annualized revenue run rate of $37 billion, up 123% from a year earlier.
Two major banks weighed in on the same day in late May with similarly bullish assessments, yet the stock barely budged. HSBC analyst Stephen Bersey sees a potential $43 billion annual revenue opportunity from Microsoft's partnership with Anthropic by 2030, based on the startup ramping sales from less than $5 billion this year to roughly $241 billion. If Anthropic funnels 60% of that revenue into cloud infrastructure and Azure captures 30% of those outlays, Bersey's math yields that figure. He maintains a buy rating and a price target of $571. For now, however, Anthropic accounts for only about 5% of Microsoft's remaining performance obligations, far behind OpenAI's 46% share.
Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Microsoft?
Morgan Stanley's Keith Weiss, who rates the stock overweight with a $650 target, points to an even more dramatic capacity story. Microsoft's data-center footprint is expected to grow from roughly 5 gigawatts in fiscal 2024 to nearly 20 gigawatts by fiscal 2028 — an expansion that feeds not just Azure but also Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and LinkedIn. The capital required is staggering: the company is on track to spend roughly $190 billion in calendar 2026 alone, with about $118 billion of that falling in the second half. By comparison, total capex for the entire fiscal 2025 came in at $64.5 billion.
Underpinning all this is a fresh product push. Microsoft recently unveiled MAI-Image-2.5, a text-to-image model that immediately grabbed third place on the global Arena leaderboard. Mustafa Suleyman, head of Microsoft AI, called it a "qualitative leap," citing sharper text rendering, more coherent layouts, and improved stylistic illustrations. The model will roll out to the MAI Playground and Microsoft Foundry platforms within two weeks, targeting enterprise customers that need high-resolution commercial visuals.
Skeptics, however, warn that the token-based pricing model for generative AI could become a drag on margins as usage scales. Projections indicate token consumption could rise 24-fold by 2030 as agentic workflows proliferate, making each query more expensive. The same dynamic that is driving the capacity buildout could also erode early profitability assumptions. That tension — between enormous upfront investment and uncertain near-term monetization — is precisely what the market is pricing in.
For now, Microsoft has guided for continued double-digit revenue and operating income growth in fiscal 2027, and Zacks forecasts earnings per share of $17.33 for the current fiscal year, representing 27.1% growth. But with the stock still trading below its 200-day moving average and the recovery from the March 2026 trough only partial, the burden of proof rests squarely on the next quarterly report.
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