Latest news with #MSFT
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Oracle Drops $3 Billion Bombshell in Europe's AI Cloud War
Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) is stepping deeper into Europe's AI arms race. The company just announced a $3 billion investment over the next five years to expand its cloud and AI infrastructure in Germany and the Netherlands. $2 billion will be poured into the Frankfurt region, beefing up Oracle's cloud backbone and AI capabilities. Another $1 billion is headed to the Netherlands to boost infrastructure in Amsterdam. Oracle says this could help it serve more public and private sector clients that are shifting workloads to the cloudand looking to AI to cut repetitive work. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 7 Warning Sign with MSFT. This move adds Oracle to the fast-growing club of U.S. giants deploying serious capital across Europe. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) plans to spend about $4.75 billion in Italy on cloud and AI. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) has mapped out a 17.8 billion ($20.77 billion) commitment to Germany through 2040and another 15.7 billion earmarked for Spain's cloud ecosystem. Meanwhile, Brookfield Asset Management (NYSE:BAM) is backing a nearly $10 billion AI data center project in Sweden. Everyone's placing their chipsand Europe's digital infrastructure is the table. Why now? It's a mix of regulation, rising demand, and regional pressure to localize AI infrastructure. Oracle's bet suggests the company sees AI and cloud migration in Europe not as a trend, but a long runway. With hyperscalers racing to build out next-gen capacity, this wave of investment could reshape not just Oracle's European footprintbut who controls the pipes powering the next decade of enterprise AI. This article first appeared on GuruFocus.
CNBC
14 hours ago
- Business
- CNBC
Microsoft gets a price target increase from Wells Fargo ahead of earnings
The artificial intelligence boom can send Microsoft shares even higher over the coming months, according to Wells Fargo. Heading into the company's scheduled earnings release on July 30, analyst Michael Turrin maintained his overweight rating on the "Magnificent Seven" stock and increased his price target by $15 to $600, which implies 19.3% upside from Monday's close. That updated outlook comes as the stock has surged in recent months and currently sits near record highs. It's gained more than 30% in the past three months and more than 19% year to date, meaningfully outperforming the S & P 500 over both timeframes. "We still see a bright future ahead for Microsoft, driven by continued growth prospects in huge categories of IT spend, ability to further monetize strong positioning in multiple end markets, and a financial profile that continues to exhibit durable margin expansion," Turrin wrote in a note dated Monday. "We acknowledge shares are trading near historical highs, but think this is justified given its early AI lead and strong incumbent position in a tight market, esp. favorable in the current environment." MSFT .SPX 3M mountain MSFT vs. S & P 500, 3-month The analyst revealed that recent field work signals that demand for Microsoft's AI tools and solutions isn't slowing down, boosting his optimism for not just the upcoming quarter's results but also fiscal year 2026. He also pointed out that its guidance for capital expenditures growth suggests "significant" AI spending for fiscal 2026, estimating $100 billion in capital expenditures. "While not necessarily expecting a repeat of MSFT's 300bps Azure beat in FQ3, upbeat partner feedback to us suggests upside to 34-35% guide given robust core + AI demand—further building on last qtr's 'accelerated growth' in Enterprise & improved scale motions," Turrin also wrote. Most analysts on Wall Street have joined the analyst in taking a bullish stance on the name, as 56 out of 62 analysts in all have a strong buy or buy rating, per LSEG data. The remaining six have stepped to the sidelines with a hold rating. Microsoft also has a consensus target of roughly $525, reflecting more than 4% upside potential.
Business Insider
19 hours ago
- Business
- Business Insider
Microsoft (MSFT) Scores a Win on Sony's PlayStation With Forza Horizon 5
Microsoft (MSFT) stock was on the move Monday after the tech company's Xbox division scored a win on Sony's (SONY) PlayStation 5. Xbox released Forza Horizon 5, previously an exclusive to Xbox consoles and PC, on the PS5 last month. Since then, the game has reportedly sold 2 million units. Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. Considering Forza Horizon 5 came out in 2021, it's impressive that Xbox was able to squeeze another 2 million sales out of it with a PS5 release. Additionally, Xbox benefits from the quick revenue boost from these sales, as compared to the long-running but lower revenue it generates from its Xbox Game Pass subscription service. This also cements the viability of Xbox's current business model. Rather than focus on the release of exclusive games on its consoles, the company has focused on offering its games across multiple consoles, even those of its direct rivals. Doing so generates game sales from consumers who were unlikely to purchase an Xbox console but were still interested in the company's games. What This Means for Xbox While Xbox hasn't performed the best this console generation, lagging behind Sony's PlayStation and Nintendo's (NTDOF) Switch and Switch 2, there's still a space for it in the current video game market. Its desire to bring Xbox games to all platforms has benefited it through this period, as has its various purchases of large studios, such as Activision Blizzard and Bethesda. If Xbox can build loyalty to its IPs across rival consoles, it could set the company up to return to an exclusive strategy. This would incentivize consumers to purchase its consoles to play their favorite titles. Is Microsoft Stock a Buy, Sell, or Hold? Turning to Wall Street, the analysts' consensus rating for Microsoft is Strong Buy, based on 31 Buy and three Hold ratings over the past three months. With that comes an average MSFT stock price target of $533.70, representing a potential 6.11% upside for the shares.
Business Insider
a day ago
- Business
- Business Insider
AI Daily: OpenAI said to end acquisition talks with Windsurf
Catch up on the top artificial intelligence news and commentary by Wall Street analysts on publicly traded companies in the space with this daily recap compiled by The Fly: Elevate Your Investing Strategy: Take advantage of TipRanks Premium at 50% off! Unlock powerful investing tools, advanced data, and expert analyst insights to help you invest with confidence. Make smarter investment decisions with TipRanks' Smart Investor Picks, delivered to your inbox every week. ACQUISITION TALKS: OpenAI has terminated discussions to acquire AI coding assistant maker Windsdurf over Microsoft (MSFT) IP concerns, The Information's Miles Kruppa and Natasha Mascarenhas report. Instead, Google (GOOGL) intends to hire Windsurf's CEO and some staff, the authors note. RESEARCHERS: Meta (META) has brought in two more AI researchers from Microsoft-backed (MSFT) OpenAI as CEO Mark Zuckerberg continues aggressive efforts to recruit talent in the space, The Information's Kalley Huang reports. Allan Jabri and Lu Liu, who worked on multimodal AI at the ChatGPT maker, are joining Meta Superintelligence Labs, the author says, citing a person with direct knowledge of the hires. DATA CENTER: Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Threads that the company is building out a data center, Hyperion, which should supply Meta's new AI lab with 5GW of computational power. 'We're actually building several multi-GW clusters. We're calling the first one Prometheus and it's coming online in '26. We're also building Hyperion, which will be able to scale up to 5GW over several years. We're building multiple more titan clusters as well. Just one of these covers a significant part of the footprint of Manhattan… Meta Superintelligence Labs will have industry-leading levels of compute and by far the greatest compute per researcher. I'm looking forward to working with the top researchers to advance the frontier!' PLAYAI: Meta has completed a deal to acquire PlayAI, an AI startup focused on voice tech, Kurt Wagner of Bloomberg reports. The 'entire PlayAI team' is set to join Meta next week, Bloomberg notes, citing an internal memo. ALPHA VERSION: (TVGN), in collaboration with Microsoft (MSFT) and Databricks, has built the alpha version of its foundational PredicTcell model. PredicTcell is powered by a robust and scalable data engineering pipeline. Utilizing machine learning and transformer architectures trained on a terabyte-scale dataset encompassing nearly a billion genetic and proteomic elements, the model enhances target discovery. Through parallel processing and distributed computing, dramatically reduces protein sequence analysis and peptide identification from months to hours.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Microsoft Captures Largest Share Of AI Budgets
Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) extends its generative AI investment lead as CIOs plan 6.3% higher AI tool spending. Morgan Stanley's second quarter CIO survey showed IT budgets and software spending set to grow 3.6% year over year through 2025, down slightly from Q1's 3.7% pace. Warning! GuruFocus has detected 7 Warning Sign with MSFT. Analysts led by Keith Weiss said Microsoft commands the steepest forward growth at 6.3%, down from 6.5% in Q4 2024, and that 67% of respondents expect to boost net spending on Microsoft tools. Microsoft has maintained its leadership and captured the largest GenAI spend, Weiss wrote. Nearly 60% of CIOs plan to boost Azure spending over the next year and 97% expect to adopt Microsoft AI tools, marking the highest AI uptake since this question launched two years ago. The survey also found 44% of enterprise workloads ran in the public cloud in Q2 2025, up from 40% a year earlier. Weiss noted, As workloads shift to the cloud, Microsoft and Amazon remain the clear beneficiaries, underlining Microsoft's edge in capturing incremental IT budgets. The modest 3.6% software spending forecast reflects macro uncertainty, analysts added, with CIOs citing inflation and rate pressure as they prioritize AI projects. That underscores Microsoft's ability to navigate budgets better than rivals. Why it matters: Microsoft's AI spending lead could drive cloud revenue growth. Microsoft's share price is currently near $503, on the back of the robust cloud and AI optimism. Analysts are sticking with a 12-month average price target at $525.29, a modest 4.37% upside from today's levels. The bullish case projects MSFT climbing toward $650, signaling roughly 30% further gains, while the most conservative outlook sees $423. This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Sign in to access your portfolio
