Microsoft’s AI – Microsoft’s shares are down 24% this year as the market rises, while the stock has underperformed over five years versus both the S&P 500 and rival Alphabet. A key worry for investors is that OpenAI has shifted from being Microsoft’s strategic ally to a di
On the same day the market keeps climbing, Microsoft is moving the other direction—and it’s the kind of gap investors notice.
So far this year, Microsoft’s stock is down 24% while the S&P 500 is up 7%. Over five years, the divergence has widened further: Microsoft’s stock is up 38%, the S&P 500 has risen 72%, and rival Alphabet’s stock is up 171%. Over five years, Alphabet has been ahead by 133 percentage points.
The worry inside the AI sector is no longer abstract. Microsoft’s AI position is being tested by a relationship that used to look like an advantage.
At the center of the debate is OpenAI—once described as Microsoft’s strategic ally. The material driving today’s chatter says OpenAI has become increasingly independent over time and is now “more of a competitor than an ally.” That shift is framed as the reason Microsoft’s Azure cloud and Copilot products may no longer carry the edge they depended on.
If the alliance had stayed on the course Microsoft expected, the logic goes, Microsoft would have had an advantage in the AI capabilities of its Azure cloud business. Copilot’s performance, in that telling, would not have been as unstable.
Copilot is also facing pressure from rivals. It has been outflanked by Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI. The Wall Street Journal pointed out that after leaning on its partnership with OpenAI, Microsoft is playing catch-up in the chatbot race, and that data shows it is losing ground with users.
What makes this moment feel sharper is how much Microsoft is now forced to rely on an older foundation—when the industry narrative has moved on.
The material notes that Apple has a hardware foundation Microsoft lacks. Apple’s 2 billion devices give it scale for AI products, many of which are licensed from Google. Microsoft. it says. does not have a comparable hardware base and is instead dependent on legacy Windows and Office for AI deployment.
That dependency is where the tension lands. The material argues that leveraging Windows and Office “has not been successful.” It also says Microsoft now has to argue that AI is not important—while other parts of its business have not convincingly steadied investor nerves. Azure cloud computing. it says. faltered in the most recent quarter. and the implication is that stronger AI integration might have improved those numbers.
Roman Pyshchyk is named in the material, and so is the bleak verdict on Microsoft’s place in the bigger race. The piece says there is a widely held view—though not universally accepted—that the winners and losers in the AI business are already set, and that there is no such thing as catching up.
Roman Pyshchyk’s framing of the story also points to an uncomfortable detail: an analyst who called NVIDIA in 2010 has named his top 10 AI stocks. and Microsoft “didn’t make the cut.” The material even adds an “Act now” line urging readers to grab the names for free. but the core fact for investors is simpler: Microsoft is absent from that shortlist.
The market math is one part of this story. The other part is the shift in a partnership that once promised leverage.
The sequence is stark: Microsoft’s stock is lagging the broader market and Alphabet over the same timeframes. and the shift from OpenAI as ally to OpenAI as competitor is presented as the key reason the AI edge behind Azure and Copilot has eroded. When that erosion meets Microsoft’s reliance on legacy software rather than the scale of a huge consumer hardware base. the gap widens into a race the material describes as potentially irrecoverable.
For investors watching AI redefine tech winners, today’s question isn’t just whether Microsoft can ship new features. It’s whether the foundation Microsoft built its AI bets on is still the one delivering momentum—and whether the lag already showing in the numbers is the start of a reversal or the confirmation of a missed era.
Microsoft stock MSFT OpenAI Azure Copilot Alphabet S&P 500 AI competition Apple devices Windows Office Roman Pyshchyk NVIDIA 2010 call