Microsoft has long charged businesses per worker for its software under seat-based pricing, but the article says its Copilot AI assistant is shifting to usage-based pricing, which could significantly affect growth not yet reflected in the stock price. The number of Copilot customers actively consuming credits through usage-based billing grew over 75% during the quarter, and daily users rose fivefold year over year. Revenue from agents and infrastructure (Azure, 365 cloud, productivity and server licensing, and industry solutions) grew 25% to nearly $77 billion, while 365 commercial cloud revenue rose 17% on a reported basis even though paid seats grew only 5%. The stock trades at about 27 times forward earnings, and analysts expect earnings to grow about 16% annually over the next several years.
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MSFTartificial intelligencecloud computingsoftwarevaluation
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Related tickers and likely impact
MSFT
▲ Likely positiveMicrosoft
Relevance: low
| Market | US stocks |
|---|---|
| Sector | Information Technology |
| Industry | Systems Software |
| Market cap | $3.9T |
| Close on 10/30/2026 | 521.90 |
| Change that session | -1.55% |
Impact is scored by AI from the headline and may be wrong. It is not investment advice.
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