Microsoft's AI investment bill is released: Betting on Anthropic made a huge profit of US$3.2 billion in a single quarter, but OpenAI turned out to be a drag. Microsoft announced its fourth quarter financial report for fiscal year 2026, unexpectedly exposing the strong contrast in its investment returns from the two leading AI companies.

Microsoft's AI investment bill is released: Betting on Anthropic made a huge profit of US$3.2 billion in a single quarter, but OpenAI turned out to be a drag. Microsoft announced its fourth quarter financial report for fiscal year 2026, unexpectedly exposing the strong contrast in its investment returns from the two leading AI companies. Microsoft's investment in Anthropic brought in US$3.2 billion in income during the quarter, while its investment in OpenAI experienced an impairment of approximately US$600 million - the single-quarter income of Anthropic alone was close to the full-year income of OpenAI. While rising sharply and depreciating at the same time, the dual bets are coming to fruition. Microsoft invested US$5 billion in Anthropic in November 2025. As part of the agreement, Anthropic simultaneously committed to purchasing Azure cloud services worth US$30 billion. Microsoft proactively disclosed the Anthropic investment income this time, showing that the investment has produced significant book growth. By comparison, Microsoft currently owns about 27% of OpenAI, and impairments of about $600 million in the quarter reduced diluted earnings per share by about 7 cents. From a full-year perspective, OpenAI’s investment remains a positive return for Microsoft—the investment brought in a total of $5 billion in fiscal 2026, driving an increase in full-year earnings per share of 67 cents. Microsoft's overall performance in the fourth quarter was still impressive, with revenue of US$90 billion and net profit of US$35.8 billion. For fiscal year 2026, full-year revenue was US$331.8 billion and net profit was US$133.7 billion. The impairment of US$600 million in a single quarter is indeed not a big deal in the face of Microsoft's size, but the ebb and flow of Anthropic and OpenAI reflects a trend that deserves more attention: Microsoft's carefully laid out two-line AI investment strategy, the balance seems to be quietly tilting in favor of latecomers. via AI News (author: AI Base)