Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at the company’s Build developer conference in Seattle, May 23, 2023.
Microsoft
Microsoft shares climbed to a record Thursday after analysts at JPMorgan Chase touted the software maker’s growth prospects in artificial intelligence.
The stock rose 3.2% to close at $348.10, topping its prior all-time high reached in November 2021, the same month the Nasdaq peaked. U.S. indexes enjoyed a broad rally, following the Federal Reserve’s announcement Wednesday that it would hold off on increasing interest rates.
AI has been a hot topic all year, after Microsoft-backed OpenAI in November released the ChatGPT chatbot, which quickly went viral. Tech companies have rushed to embed the technology into products and features and have boasted their ability to use AI to drive cost savings as recession concerns persist.
Microsoft is a major beneficiary of the rise of ChatGPT and tangential products. On top of its hefty investment in OpenAI, the company provides the underlying computing power. Microsoft also has an exclusive license on OpenAI’s models, including the GPT-4 large language model that can spit out natural-sounding words in response to a human’s text input.
Microsoft has incorporated OpenAI tools into its Bing search engine and even the Windows operating system. At the company’s event in February to announce its Bing Chatbot, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said “it’s an exciting time in tech.”
Investors want to see what it all means for Microsoft’s earnings and revenue.
In April, Microsoft finance chief Amy Hood said she expects fiscal fourth-quarter growth for Azure cloud of 26% to 27% year over year in constant currency, with 1 percentage point of it coming from AI services. On Monday, in a public discussion with Microsoft technology chief Kevin Scott, Hood provided more specifics, saying that “the next generation AI business will be the fastest-growing $10 billion business in our history.”
In the past four quarters, Microsoft has generated almost $208 billion in total revenue.
Scott went deeper on Hood’s prediction.
“Because it really is a very general platform, we have lots of different ways that $10 billion of ARR is going to first show up,” he said. ARR stands for annual recurring revenue.
“There is all of the people who want to come use our infrastructure, whether they’re training their own models, whether they are running an open-source model they’ve got or whether they are making API calls into one of the big frontier models that we’ve built with OpenAI,” Scott said.
Following the event, JPMorgan analysts lifted their price target to $350 from $315.
“While MSFT continues to encounter a broad wave of cloud optimizations weighing on Azure growth, we see it planting the longer-term seeds for success across Security, Teams, Power Apps and now the forward-looking OpenAI/ChatGPT investments,” wrote the analysts, who have the equivalent of a buy rating on Microsoft stock.
With Microsoft’s 46% rally this year, the stock has recouped all its losses from 2022, when investors rotated out of technology in anticipation of rising interest rates and economic headwinds.
Negative sentiment around cloud growth and a contracting PC market led to pessimism on Wall Street last year. But the excitement around AI in addition to the cost-cutting measures that tech companies implemented produced a renewed bullishness. The Nasdaq is up 32% this year, doubling the gains in the S&P 500.
A woman walks past a logo of WhatsApp during a Meta event in Mumbai, India, on Sept. 20, 2023.
Niharika Kulkarni | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Meta is pushing back against a ban on WhatsApp from government devices.
The chief administrative officer, or CAO, of the U.S. House of Representatives told staffers on Monday that they are not allowed to use Meta’s popular messaging app. The CAO cited a lack of transparency about WhatsApp’s data privacy and security practices as the reason for the ban, according to a report by Axios that cited an internal email from the government office.
The CAO told House staff members in the email that they are not allowed to download WhatsApp on their government devices or access the app on their smartphones or desktop computers, the report said. Staff members must remove WhatsApp from their devices if they have the app installed on their devices, the report said.
“Protecting the People’s House is our topmost priority, and we are always monitoring and analyzing for potential cybersecurity risks that could endanger the data of House Members and staff,” U.S. House Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Szpindor told CNBC in a written statement.
Meta spokesperson Andy Stone on Monday responded to the report via a post on X, saying the company disagrees “with the House Chief Administrative Officer’s characterization in the strongest possible terms.”
“We know members and their staffs regularly use WhatsApp and we look forward to ensuring members of the House can join their Senate counterparts in doing so officially,” Stone said.
In a separate X post, Stone said WhatsApp’s encrypted nature provides a “higher level of security than most of the apps on the CAO’s approved list that do not offer that protection.”
Some of the messaging apps the CAO said are acceptable alternatives to WhatsApp include Microsoft Teams, Signal and Apple’s iMessage, the Axios report said.
Meta is currently embroiled in an antitrust case with the Federal Trade Commission over the social media company’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram.
The Super Micro Computer headquarters in San Jose, California, on Dec. 3, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Super Micro Computer shares fell about 6% on Monday after the server maker said it plans to offer $2 billion in convertible notes, maturing in 2030.
A company’s stock often falls on the announcement of a convertible offering because the eventual conversion to equity could dilute existing shareholders’ stakes.
Super Micro, which has seen its business boom due to soaring demand for Nvidia’s artificial intelligence processors, said in a press release that it plans to use the proceeds from the offering for “general corporate purposes, including to fund working capital for growth and business expansion.” It also said it would spend about $200 million to repurchase its stock from the note issuers.
Even after Monday’s slide, Super Micro shares are up close to 40% so far in 2025 as the company remains one of a handful of server makers that can sell systems based around new chips from Nvidia, Advanced Micro Devices, and Intel soon after they start shipping. The stock has been viewed by Wall Street as an AI pure play that will appreciate with tech megacap companies expected to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers to support AI workloads.
Super Micro also secured a major contract with a data center in Saudi Arabia when President Donald Trump visited the Middle East in May.
Super Micro “has emerged as a market leader in AI-optimized infrastructure,” Raymond James analysts wrote in a report last month, saying that 70% of the company’s revenue was attributable to AI. The analysts recommend buying the stock.
Investors soured on Super Micro in March and April on concerns about tariffs, and in May the company slashed its fiscal 2025 guidance and chose not to reiterate its previous forecast for $40 billion in fiscal 2026 sales, due to tariff and AI chip uncertainty.
The stock has recouped some of those losses but is still trading well below its high for the year reached in February.
Super Micro had a tumultuous 2024 largely because of accusations of accounting irregularities, and was forced to refile financials with the SEC in order to avoid delisting from the Nasdaq. Super Micro also named a new auditor, removed its CFO and named additional members to its board of directors.
An Atlas V rocket of United Launch Alliance (ULA) lifts off from Space Launch Complex 41 at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida on June 23, 2025.
Gregg Newton | Afp | Getty Images
Amazon‘s second batch of Kuiper internet satellites reached low Earth orbit on Monday, adding to its plans for a massive constellation and ramping up competition with SpaceX’s Starlink.
A United Launch Alliance rocket carrying 27 Kuiper satellites lifted off from a launchpad at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida at 6:54 a.m. ET, according to a livestream.
“We have ignition and lift off of United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket carrying satellites for Amazon’s Project Kuiper internet constellation, continuing a new chapter in low Earth orbit satellite connectivity,” Ben Chilton, an ordnance engineer at ULA, said on the livestream following the launch.
Six years ago, Amazon unveiled its plans to build a constellation of internet-beaming satellites in low Earth orbit, called Project Kuiper. The service will compete directly with Elon Musk’sStarlink, which currently dominates the market and has 8,000 satellites in orbit.
Amazon in April successfully sent up 27 Kuiper internet satellites into low Earth orbit, a region of space that’s within 1,200 miles of the Earth’s surface.
The 54 craft currently in orbit are the start of Amazon’s planned constellation of 3,236 satellites. The company has to meet a Federal Communications Commission deadline to launch half of its total constellation, or 1,618 satellites, by July 2026.
The company has booked more than 80 launches with several providers, including rival SpaceX, to deliver Kuiper its satellites into orbit.