Microsoft Stock Climbs Toward 515 Dollars as Nvidia Fueled Tech Rally Meets Fed Chair Warsh Speech

Shares of Microsoft Corp. climbed further Friday, extending a powerful monthlong rally that has added hundreds of billions of dollars in market value, as investors weighed a continuing surge in technology stocks against Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh’s closely watched speech at the central bank’s annual Jackson Hole symposium.

Microsoft stock traded at 515.30 dollars, up 10.24 dollars, or 2.03%, as of 12:25 p.m. Eastern time on the Nasdaq, according to Google Finance data. The move built on gains from Thursday’s session, when major technology stocks rallied broadly following blowout quarterly results from chipmaker Nvidia that revived optimism around artificial intelligence spending across the sector.

Friday’s trading also unfolded against the backdrop of Warsh’s first major address as Fed chair at the Kansas City Federal Reserve’s Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium in Moran, Wyoming. Investors had been looking to the speech for clarity on the central bank’s approach to inflation and interest rates, with major indexes trading choppily through the morning as traders parsed his remarks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and S&P 500 held modest gains for much of the session, while the Nasdaq Composite fluctuated between small gains and losses.

Microsoft’s advance Friday is part of a much larger rally that began in late July, when the company reported fiscal fourth-quarter results that beat Wall Street expectations across revenue, profit and cloud growth. The stock has climbed roughly 25% to 30% since closing at 390.54 dollars on July 29, the day of the earnings report, according to data compiled by multiple market trackers, with the bulk of the move coming in a single trading session in which shares jumped more than 15%, one of the company’s largest one-day gains in years.

Microsoft reported fiscal fourth-quarter revenue of 90.0 billion dollars, up 18% from a year earlier, with growth driven by strong demand across its Azure cloud platform and the company’s own artificial intelligence applications. Diluted earnings per share came in at 4.81 dollars on a GAAP basis, up 32% year-over-year, while non-GAAP earnings per share of 4.74 dollars beat analyst estimates. For the full fiscal year, Microsoft’s total revenue surpassed 331 billion dollars, up 18%, while its Microsoft Cloud business topped 214 billion dollars in annual revenue, up 27%.

Azure and other cloud services revenue grew 43% year-over-year in the quarter, with the company saying customer demand continued to exceed available capacity. Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood told analysts on the earnings call that Azure growth is expected to accelerate further, guiding to approximately 45% constant-currency growth in the first quarter of fiscal 2027. Commercial remaining performance obligations, a measure of future contracted revenue, rose 84% year-over-year to 678 billion dollars.

“We are advancing the frontier on the cost-to-outcome curve, ensuring every customer can turn tokens into business results,” Microsoft Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said in the company’s earnings release. “This year, Azure revenue surpassed 100 billion dollars for the first time, and Microsoft 365 Copilot reached over 30 million paid seats, reflecting the confidence customers are placing in us to power their AI transformation.”

Hood also pointed to strong monetization trends tied to the company’s artificial intelligence products. “Demand continues to exceed available supply,” she told analysts on the call, adding that efficiency gains in Microsoft’s data centers were being quickly monetized as they came online.

The company’s Microsoft 365 Copilot product, an AI-powered assistant embedded across its productivity software, saw paid seats more than double sequentially to over 30 million, up from more than 20 million as of April. GitHub Copilot, the company’s AI coding assistant, saw revenue accelerate more than 60% quarter-over-quarter following a shift to usage-based pricing in June, and now counts roughly 50 million users among GitHub’s broader base of 225 million developers.

Analysts have continued to raise their price targets on Microsoft shares in the weeks since the earnings report. According to consensus data compiled by market trackers, the average analyst price target on the stock now sits near 560 dollars, implying additional upside even after the stock’s recent run. Of the more than 45 analysts tracking the company, the large majority maintain buy-equivalent ratings, with none currently recommending investors sell the stock.

Microsoft’s rally has not been without volatility. Shares fell more than 3% in a single session earlier this month amid broader market jitters, before resuming their upward trajectory in recent days alongside renewed strength across the technology sector. The stock’s performance this year has also been shaped by the company’s roughly 3.2 billion dollar gain tied to its investment in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, which contributed to the earnings beat in the fiscal fourth quarter.

Capital spending has remained a key point of focus for investors evaluating Microsoft’s AI strategy. The company’s capital expenditures, including finance leases, reached 41 billion dollars in the fiscal fourth quarter, up sharply from a year earlier, and Hood has said spending is expected to exceed 50 billion dollars in the current quarter. Microsoft has also extended the estimated useful life of its data centers and office buildings to 25 years, a change that affects how the company accounts for depreciation on its rapidly expanding AI infrastructure.