--- title: "After massive investments in AI infrastructure, Microsoft sounds the horn for the AI monetization counterattack! Copilot is expected to 迎来爆发时刻" type: "News" locale: "en" url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/281599283.md" description: "Microsoft executive Judson Althoff stated that Copilot's sales momentum is strong, and they have adjusted their sales strategy to address market criticism. Despite facing increased investment in AI infrastructure and concerns about software stock valuations, the optimistic growth expectations for Copilot are crucial for Microsoft's stock price. Microsoft's stock price fell 23% in the first quarter, but they have sold 15 million Microsoft 365 Copilot seats, with CEO Nadella noting a significant increase in the number of enterprise AI chatbot users" datetime: "2026-04-03T03:22:05.000Z" locales: - [zh-CN](https://longbridge.com/zh-CN/news/281599283.md) - [en](https://longbridge.com/en/news/281599283.md) - [zh-HK](https://longbridge.com/zh-HK/news/281599283.md) --- # After massive investments in AI infrastructure, Microsoft sounds the horn for the AI monetization counterattack! Copilot is expected to 迎来爆发时刻 According to the Zhitong Finance APP, Judson Althoff, a senior executive at American tech giant Microsoft (MSFT.US), told employees on Thursday local time that after facing intense market criticism in recent months due to relatively low adoption rates, Microsoft has made more optimistic sales progress in selling its exclusive Copilot artificial intelligence add-on product to large enterprise clients. The optimistic growth expectations for Copilot are crucial for Microsoft's currently weak stock price, and the reasons behind this are not complicated. Microsoft is now at the intersection of two narratives that severely impact its valuation—on one hand, there is a surge in AI infrastructure investment, with the market concerned that massive capital expenditures will continue to erode free cash flow; on the other hand, the pessimistic logic of "AI disrupting everything" is compressing software stock valuations. Software stocks, including Microsoft, have significantly declined this year, primarily due to market concerns that generative AI large models may intensify competition with SaaS software vendors. Microsoft's stock price fell 23% in the first quarter, while the company increased its investment in AI data center construction to serve large cloud computing clients like OpenAI; investors are looking for signs that cloud giants like Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle can prove that AI model-enhanced products will drive revenue and profitability growth. In January of this year, Microsoft announced that the paid Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is an add-on to the commercial Office suite productivity software subscriptions, had sold a cumulative total of 15 million seats, which is about 3% of the total seats in the standard bundled package. General enterprise users of Microsoft 365 can use the limited-functionality Copilot ChatAI chatbot assistant. CEO Satya Nadella stated during an earnings call that the company has "multiple times more enterprise AI chatbot product users." The pricing for Microsoft 365 Copilot, which can be as high as $30 per month, was widely launched in the second half of 2023, and since then, many Wall Street analysts have described its adoption as still in the early stages. After disclosing the initial statistics in January, the UBS analyst team that recommended buying Microsoft stock indicated that they originally expected the number of subscription users to be higher. According to an internal meeting minutes reviewed by institutions, Microsoft management recently received feedback from Wall Street analysts after announcing its performance, and subsequently adjusted its sales and development strategy. Althoff, CEO of Microsoft's commercial business, stated at a recent employee meeting that sales personnel had previously been working hard to secure paid versions of Microsoft 365 Copilot seats and encouraged all other users, including regular retail users, to actively use Copilot Chat. After receiving feedback from analysts regarding part of the disclosures in January, Microsoft promptly adjusted its model for selling the Microsoft 365 Copilot AI productivity plugin to enterprise clients Althoff stated that he and Microsoft's Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood had set very ambitious explosive growth targets for the financial quarter ending in March, which concluded on Tuesday. "These targets have already been achieved in the third financial quarter," Althoff said in an interview with the media. The company has set new, more ambitious targets for the financial quarter ending in June. "I am actually very confident about these numbers," he said. **One of Microsoft's AI revenue engines - the Microsoft 365 Copilot that requires additional payment from users** Microsoft 365 Copilot, which is an additional paid add-on license layered on top of the commercial version of Microsoft 365/Office subscription, is not part of the standard M365 package. Microsoft's current official stance is that a qualifying commercial paid subscription to Microsoft 365 is required before purchasing the Microsoft 365 Copilot license; the enterprise version page shows a price of $30 per user per month. The biggest difference compared to the standard M365/Office suite is not whether there is an AI chatbot, but whether it truly integrates with your Microsoft work data and is deeply embedded in the Office applications. The standard commercial version of Microsoft 365 now typically includes Copilot Chat, and there is no additional cost for qualifying enterprise users; it is more of a web-based information-assisted secure AI chatbot that supports some file uploads, page processing, and AI agent capabilities, but cannot be deeply embedded into daily workflows. According to Microsoft's official description, Microsoft 365 Copilot further provides: exclusive advanced work context capabilities based on Microsoft Graph, which can access your emails, meetings, chats, documents, and other work data, and conveniently embed directly into applications like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams with the help of AI large models, deeply integrating into enterprise workflows in Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc., assisting in drafting, summarizing, analyzing, and generating content. The optimistic growth expectations for Copilot are crucial for Microsoft's currently weak stock price. If Copilot sales accelerate significantly in the future, Microsoft can strongly demonstrate that its substantial AI investments can be converted into higher ARPU, stronger software added value, and more visible profit leverage, based on the continued strong expansion of demand for Azure cloud AI training/inference computing resources alongside traditional cloud computing services. Conversely, if adoption rates remain slow, the market's judgment on Microsoft will remain within the compressed framework of "heavy AI spending, insufficient short-term returns, and even facing intensified competition at the foundational model level." In other words, Copilot is not just a bonus in Microsoft's AI story, but one of the core AI revenue engines in the current stock price recovery process, second only to the Azure cloud platform **Microsoft and other American tech giants are at the intersection of two unsettling trends shaking the tech sector** As a long-time supporter of ChatGPT developer OpenAI, Microsoft, despite recording its worst quarterly performance since the 2008 financial crisis as of the recently concluded March, continues to double down on building data centers to compete with Oracle, Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company), and Amazon for dominance in the cloud computing space and the absolute leadership in cloud AI training/inference platforms. According to the latest analyst expectations compiled by institutions, Amazon, along with Alphabet, Meta Platforms Inc. (Facebook's parent company), Oracle, and Microsoft, is expected to reach a cumulative artificial intelligence-related capital expenditure of approximately $650 billion by 2026, with some analysts believing that overall spending could exceed $700 billion—implying a year-on-year increase in AI capital expenditure of over 70%. Notably, these five American super tech giants are expected to invest about $1.5 trillion in building an immensely large AI computing infrastructure from 2023 to 2026; in contrast, these tech giants have cumulatively invested about $600 billion throughout their entire historical statistics before 2022. However, the enormous AI expenditures mentioned above will significantly reduce these companies' free cash flow, and the lack of clear monetization and revenue generation paths closely associated with AI in the short term has increasingly worried investors. The growing investment in AI computing infrastructure raises concerns about when it will bring more significant investment returns in terms of revenue and profit growth. Additionally, the pessimistic narrative of "AI disrupts everything" has led global investors to continue selling software stocks, including those of these five tech giants, resulting in a persistent decline in their stock prices this year, particularly with Microsoft's stock price dropping 23% in the first quarter, marking its worst quarterly performance since the 2008 financial crisis ### Related Stocks - [MSFT.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MSFT.US.md) - [IXN.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/IXN.US.md) - [XDAT.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/XDAT.US.md) - [IGV.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/IGV.US.md) - [SRVR.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/SRVR.US.md) - [MSFU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MSFU.US.md) - [MSFX.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MSFX.US.md) - [XSW.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/XSW.US.md) - [IDGT.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/IDGT.US.md) - [DAT.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/DAT.US.md) - [MSFL.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MSFL.US.md) - [MSFO.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MSFO.US.md) - [DTCR.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/DTCR.US.md) - [CLOU.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/CLOU.US.md) - [MSFD.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MSFD.US.md) - [MSFY.US](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/MSFY.US.md) ## Related News & Research - [Microsoft Q3 Earnings Preview — Can Strong Results Restart the MSFT Stock Rally?](https://longbridge.com/en/news/284180112.md) - [Microsoft Q3 Earnings Preview: What To Expect From Upcoming Report](https://longbridge.com/en/news/284432552.md) - [Forrester Launches Forrester AI Agent For Microsoft 365 Copilot To Deliver Research-Driven Insights Into Leaders’ Workflows | FORR Stock News](https://longbridge.com/en/news/284429639.md) - [LinkedIn's AI hiring agents on track for $450 million in yearly revenue](https://longbridge.com/en/news/284649858.md) - [Microsoft Reportedly Eyed Cursor Before SpaceX's $60 Billion Deal— But Chose Not To Proceed](https://longbridge.com/en/news/283799323.md)