Microsoft Stock that closed 2% higher on Friday, opened 1% lower on Monday in the initial hours of the trade. On Monday, Microsoft announced an Amended Agreement in the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership.
The amended agreement’s statement reads – “While this amendment simplifies the partnership, the work we’re doing together remains ambitious. From scaling gigawatts of new datacenter capacity, to collaborating on next-generation silicon, to applying AI to advance cybersecurity, and more, we’re excited to keep partnering to advance and scale AI for people and organizations around the world.”
The agreement spells out:
- Microsoft remains OpenAI’s primary cloud partner, and OpenAI products will ship first on Azure, unless Microsoft cannot and chooses not to support the necessary capabilities. OpenAI can now serve all its products to customers across any cloud provider.
- Microsoft will continue to have a license to OpenAI IP for models and products through 2032. Microsoft’s license will now be non-exclusive.
- Microsoft will no longer pay a revenue share to OpenAI.
- Revenue share payments from OpenAI to Microsoft continue through 2030, independent of OpenAI’s technology progress, at the same percentage but subject to a total cap.
- Microsoft continues to participate directly in OpenAI’s growth as a major shareholder.
Since 2019, Microsoft and OpenAI have worked together to advance artificial intelligence responsibly and make its benefits broadly accessible.
In its February 2026 statement on their agreement with OpenAI, the company said, “Microsoft maintains its exclusive license and access to intellectual property across OpenAI models and products. Collaborations like the partnership between OpenAI and Amazon were always contemplated under our agreements and Microsoft is excited to see what they build together.”
The February 2026 statement further stated, “The ongoing revenue share arrangement remains unchanged and has always included sharing revenue from partnerships between OpenAI and other cloud providers,”
Microsoft (MSFT) trading at $421, is down 12% YTD and has gained 8.5% in the last one year. Microsoft (MSFT) report earnings on Wednesday after the close.
“Microsoft has been under pressure since its October peak, not because the story is broken, but because expectations got ahead of reality. Azure growth has been solid, but not strong enough to keep investors’ recent disdain for software stocks at bay. Massive AI spending used to be rewarded, now it has raised concerns around margins and returns.
“When they report on Wednesday afternoon look to see if Azure growth re-accelerates and shows a meaningful contribution. Another metric to watch is Copilot. Shares are back to the levels from which it opened after last quarter’s report when they initially dropped by 10%. They went on to fall another 17% before finally rebounding. Software stocks remain out of favor and the market will look to Microsoft to try and change the narrative,” says Jay Woods, Chief Market Strategist at Freedom Capital Markets.
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