Microsoft stock breaks $513 as Azure passes $100B and Copilot tops 30M seats

Microsoft shares broke $513 on the back of accelerating Azure and Copilot momentum. The company disclosed that Azure annual revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time in fiscal Q4 2026 at 43% year-over-year growth, with remaining performance obligations — a backlog measure — of $678 billion underpinning confidence in sustained AI-driven demand. GAAP EPS came in at $4.81, aided by a $3.2 billion gain tied to Microsoft's investment in Anthropic among several discrete items. More than 30 million paid Copilot seats are now reported.

The numbers tell the AI-cloud flywheel story: Azure growth (43%) is outpacing rivals, and the $678B backlog signals customers pre-committing to multi-year AI capacity. The Anthropic gain is a reminder that Microsoft's balance sheet benefits both from selling AI compute and from equity stakes in the labs consuming it — including its complicated OpenAI relationship and its newer Anthropic exposure.

Competitively, the $100B Azure milestone and 43% growth compare favorably against Google Cloud's reported 82% growth off a smaller base, framing the hyperscaler race as Microsoft defending scale while Google grows faster from behind. Microsoft Foundry's addition of Claude capabilities and Meta's heavy Azure token consumption further cement its position as a multi-model AI platform.

What to watch: whether the RPO backlog converts to revenue on schedule, how capital expenditure on AI data centers pressures margins, and whether 30M Copilot seats translate into durable per-seat revenue as pricing and credit-based consumption models evolve.