Microsoft’s AI moat is wider than the headlines suggest. On April 27, Microsoft and OpenAI announced revised partnership terms that loosened the exclusivity that once defined the relationship. OpenAI can now offer its API across any cloud provider, including Amazon Bedrock, and Microsoft’s IP license became nonexclusive, though it still runs through 2032. Tech futures opened lower Tuesday partly on the news, and Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction) trades at $426.49 heading into Wednesday’s April 29 fiscal Q3 report.
The reset changes the relationship. It does not break the moat. Here is why.
1. Azure Still Gets First Dibs
New OpenAI products will still ship first on Azure under certain conditions, and OpenAI’s product payments to Microsoft continue at the same percentage, capped, through 2030. The Q1 FY26 reset already locked in a separate $250 billion incremental Azure commitment from OpenAI. That is contractual revenue locked in by agreement.
2. The AI Business Is Already a Franchise
Satya Nadella put it bluntly on the Q2 FY26 call: “Even in these early innings, we have built an AI business that is larger than some of our biggest franchises that took decades to build.” The numbers back it up. Microsoft Cloud crossed $51.5 billion in a single quarter, up 26%, with Azure growing 39% and commercial RPO at $625 billion. Roughly 55% of that backlog (around $350 billion) sits outside the OpenAI relationship.
3. Copilot and Foundry Are the Real Distribution Engine
Microsoft 365 Copilot reached 15 million paid seats, with seat growth up 160% year over year and daily active users up 10x. GitHub Copilot crossed 4.7 million paid subscribers, up 75%. Foundry runs at a $2 billion-plus annual run rate across 31,000 customers, growing 60%. These are distribution channels OpenAI cannot replicate by going multicloud.
4. The Bet Is No Longer Single-Vendor
Microsoft is making significant investments in Anthropic separately, and Foundry already supports GPT-5.0.2, Claude 4.5, and Cohere, with over 1,500 customers using both Anthropic and OpenAI models. Nadella’s Maya 200 accelerator delivers “over 30% improved total cost of ownership” versus the latest fleet hardware. Add nearly one gigawatt of capacity added in Q2 alone, and the picture is a hyperscaler diversifying its supply chain on its own terms.
What to Watch Wednesday
Polymarket assigns a 93% probability MSFT beats Q3 FY26 estimates, with 55 Buy ratings, three Holds, zero Sells and a $572.67 analyst price target. Guidance pegs Azure growth at 37% to 38%. Keep an eye on the stock for any deceleration in that figure or in RPO. Those are the metrics that would actually narrow the moat.
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