Microsoft just wrapped up its fiscal 2026 year with a set of powerhouse earnings, but the real story lies in the fine print regarding its high stakes bets on artificial intelligence. While the company posted massive overall profits, a closer look at its balance sheet reveals a surprising divergence between its two most prominent AI partnerships. Specifically, Microsoft logged a staggering 3.2 billion dollar gain from its investment in Anthropic this past quarter alone, providing a significant boost to its diluted earnings per share.
This windfall comes after Microsoft poured 5 billion dollars into Anthropic back in late 2025 through a strategic deal that also commits the AI lab to spending 30 billion dollars on Azure cloud services. Interestingly, Microsoft typically keeps the valuation of its Anthropic stake quiet, making the decision to disclose such a massive jump in value particularly telling. It suggests that the partnership is paying off far more rapidly than many analysts might have anticipated given the competitive landscape.
Meanwhile, the relationship with OpenAI provided a bit of a mixed bag during the same period. Despite owning roughly 27 percent of the firm and receiving ongoing revenue sharing payments, Microsoft had to mark down its OpenAI investment by about 600 million dollars this quarter. While this dip reduced earnings per share slightly, it was essentially a rounding error compared to the company’s total scale, as Microsoft hauled in 90 billion dollars in revenue and over 35 billion dollars in net income for those three months.
When zooming out to view the full fiscal year, however, OpenAI remains a winner for Microsoft, generating a combined gain of 5 billion dollars across all four quarters. Even so, the sheer velocity of growth seen with Anthropic has caught industry attention. To see nearly as much profit realized from one newcomer in ninety days as was made from an established giant like OpenAI over an entire year highlights just how volatile and fast moving the current AI arms race has become.
