microsoft

According to a report by Reuters, influenced by multiple factors such as the tense Sino-U.S. relations, China's push for domestic software alternatives, and U.S. export controls, Microsoft has closed at least 15 branches and joint ventures in China over the past five years, executing a strategic contraction. In 2023, the company internally considered exiting the Chinese market, as some executives believed that "the geopolitical risks outweighed the limited economic returns," but ultimately did not proceed with the exit. Microsoft disclosed in 2024 that its business in China accounted for only about 1.5% of its global revenue.The report states that Microsoft's final decision to remain in China was primarily due to the establishment of a profitable path—providing Azure cloud and AI services to Chinese companies like ByteDance and Shein, helping them operate compliantly in overseas markets. Additionally, the company believes that retaining its business in China remains strategically significant for acquiring engineering talent. However, analysts question the sustainability of this AI business model: the service relies on third-party models like OpenAI, and Chinese companies are increasingly adopting domestic alternatives like Kimi, which offer comparable performance at lower costs.Microsoft's research and development presence in China is also contracting. Its predecessor, Microsoft Research Asia, has successively established new labs in Vancouver, Singapore, and Tokyo. In 2024, the company offered job opportunities to 1,000 top engineers to relocate to the U.S. and three other countries, but only about one-third accepted, with most senior engineers moving to domestic universities and tech companies. A Microsoft spokesperson responded that the company will continue to commit to the Chinese market but did not comment on specific decision details. ByteDance and Shein did not respond to related inquiries.

According to Bloomberg, the foreign exchange reserves of U.S. stocks held by the Swiss National Bank grew by more than 10% in the second quarter, reaching the highest level on record. As of June 30, the bank held shares in over 2,300 U.S. listed companies, with a total value of $191.4 billion.The top three holdings are Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft. In addition, the Swiss National Bank also holds shares worth $716.6 million in defense software company Palantir, although activist investors have called for the sale of some holdings, the bank has refused.

Microsoft plans to publicly release its next-generation Maia 300 AI chip this fall (possibly as early as September). To meet delivery demands for 2027, Microsoft has engaged with TSMC to secure manufacturing capacity for over 300,000 units of the chip.

According to Gate market data, Microsoft’s stock rose 0.93% in pre-market trading.

According to The Information, Microsoft's self-developed artificial intelligence chip project has shown signs of recovery after experiencing a slow start.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence posted on the X platform that a cluster of compromised websites has been found using ClickFix and EtherHiding technologies to spread malware, with attacks targeting thousands of enterprise and consumer devices worldwide every day.Attackers inject Base64 encoded JavaScript to connect to the BNB Smart Chain RPC gateway, obtaining the next stage instructions stored by smart contracts. Since the contract content can only be modified by the deployer's wallet, traditional takedown methods are difficult to counter. The attack deceives users into opening a run dialog box with fake verification codes, pasting clipboard content, and executing commands from the attacker, while also involving the abuse of various system tools such as conhost, cmd, PowerShell, and mshta, as well as command obfuscation techniques. Successful execution may lead to credential exposure, persistence establishment, lateral movement, and even ransomware attacks.Microsoft recommends that enterprises enable Defender's multi-layer protection, restrict command line tools, enable PowerShell script logging, and remind users not to paste commands from unknown sources into the run window or terminal for execution.

According to Ed Zitron's citation of Microsoft's latest financial report and Bloomberg analysis, OpenAI contributed $24.1 billion in revenue to Microsoft for the fiscal year ending June 2026, accounting for more than 70% of Microsoft's AI business revenue for that fiscal year, and approximately 7.26% of Microsoft's total revenue of $331.8 billion for FY26. Bloomberg estimates OpenAI's contribution to be around 70%, based on Microsoft's previously disclosed 123% annual growth rate in AI business and an annualized AI revenue scale of about $34 billion.The report points out that Microsoft has accumulated approximately $261.3 billion in capital expenditures since early 2022, with analysts believing that a significant portion of this expenditure serves a single client, OpenAI. Ed Zitron commented that Microsoft "has invested in AI for nearly four years, and aside from a company that requires infinite resources to maintain its computing bill, there is almost nothing to show for it." Previously, in a report on August 4, Ed Zitron cited analysts estimating that OpenAI and Anthropic together account for more than 70% of the AI revenue of the three major cloud providers: Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Microsoft also disclosed in its financial report that as of June 30, accounts receivable from OpenAI amounted to $6 billion.

As the US stock technology sector experiences strong buying, the three major indices have collectively risen. According to data from the Gate platform, Microsoft (MSFT) is currently priced at $487.66, with an intraday increase of 4.85%; Amazon (AMZN) is currently priced at $284.02, with an increase of 4.58%. Boosted by strong spot price increases, the trading and position sizes of related stock derivatives on the Gate platform have rapidly climbed. The latest data from Coinglass shows that the 24-hour contract trading volume for Gate MSFT reached $12.3705 million, surging by 211.64%; the 24-hour contract trading volume for Gate AMZNX reached $4.9566 million, soaring by 163.68%. Both trading increases rank among the top in similar stock derivatives on centralized exchanges (CEX).

According to Jinshi reports, China Merchants Securities released a research report stating that the AI industry is currently still facing real supply constraints, and there has not yet been a significant overall surplus. Large technology companies are still increasing investments in AI infrastructure, and customer demand for additional supply continues to grow.Microsoft's computing power utilization and SK Hynix's order situation indicate that the current industrial contradictions mainly manifest as insufficient supply of high-performance computing power, advanced storage, and data center support. Short-term investment opportunities can be focused on alleviating computing power bottlenecks.

According to Gate market data, Microsoft's intraday increase expanded to over 5%, with a cumulative rise of more than 25% over three days.

According to Goldman Sachs, it will include Applied Materials (AMAT.O), Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), Microsoft (MSFT.O), and United Parcel Service (UPS.N) in the list of stocks to buy with confidence. It will remove Broadcom (AVGO.O), Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS.N), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), and ServiceNow from that list.

According to Gate market data, after the US stock market opened, Microsoft's gains expanded to over 15%, expected to create the largest single-day increase since March 2020.On Wednesday, after the US stock market closed, Microsoft announced its financial report for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026, with revenue of $90 billion, an 18% year-on-year increase. The growth rate of Azure and other cloud services rose from 40% in the previous quarter to 43%. CEO Satya Nadella stated that Azure's full-year revenue "exceeded $100 billion," growing by 41%, marking the first time this business has crossed the $100 billion threshold.

According to Gate market data, U.S. stocks opened higher, with all three major indexes rising: the Dow Jones increased by 0.6%, the S&P 500 rose by 1%, and the Nasdaq climbed by 1.6%. Microsoft (MSFT.O) surged about 12%, with its cloud business growth in the fourth fiscal quarter far exceeding expectations.The storage sector saw significant gains, with SanDisk (SNDK.O) rising about 11% and SK Hynix (SKHY.O) increasing by about 7%.

According to Jinshi reports, Microsoft plans to maintain a multimodal strategy, allowing customers to use models from OpenAI or Anthropic in a way that better meets their needs.

According to Jinshi News, Microsoft is considering offering some internally developed AI models with open weights.

Microsoft released its Q4 fiscal year 2026 financial report, with revenue of $90 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%, exceeding market expectations of $87.7 billion; adjusted earnings per share of $4.74, a year-on-year increase of 23%, which is 11.5% higher than expected; operating profit of $40.6 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%. Intelligent cloud revenue was $39.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 32%, with Azure and other cloud services revenue growing by 43%, significantly higher than the market expectation of 39.6%. Total revenue from Microsoft Cloud was $59.3 billion, a year-on-year increase of 27%. CEO Satya Nadella disclosed that Azure's annual revenue has surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and paid users of Microsoft 365 Copilot exceeded 30 million.In terms of capital expenditure, the fourth quarter's property and equipment acquisition expenditure was $35.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of approximately 110%; total capital expenditure including finance leases was $41 billion, a year-on-year increase of 70%, but lower than the market expectation of $42.5 billion. The remaining performance obligations (RPO) for cloud business surged 84% year-on-year to $678 billion, about twice the annual revenue. Microsoft disclosed in a regulatory filing that new unexecuted data center lease commitments in the fourth quarter exceeded $130 billion, with the total unexecuted lease commitments increasing by 67.4% quarter-on-quarter to $329.1 billion. Annual revenue was $331.8 billion, a year-on-year increase of 18%; net profit was $133.7 billion, a year-on-year increase of 31% (GAAP).

According to Jinshi reports, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella emphasized that customers must have the ability to switch freely between different AI models, both closed-source and open-source. He stated during a conference call that the number of Microsoft customers using multiple models has quadrupled since the beginning of this year. Nadella pointed out that the system framework should be separate from the models, allowing for the replacement of models at any given time and the use of cutting-edge models.Microsoft has investments in both OpenAI and Anthropic, and has co-signed an open letter supporting open models with companies like NVIDIA and Palantir.