How Microsoft Missed $2 Trillion In AI
Part 1 of 3 on Microsoft and AI.
Follow the whole story: every piece in this series is on our AI storyline page.
Think about your last big meeting. Someone opened PowerPoint. Executives spend close to 23 hours a week in meetings, a Harvard Business Review study found. For close to 40 years, Microsoft has sold that slide software. Microsoft says more than 90% of the Fortune 500 use its AI assistant, Microsoft 365 Copilot.
But ask who drafts the deck today, and the answer is often an AI model. Increasingly it’s Anthropic’s Claude, which Microsoft itself now offers inside Copilot. Microsoft sells the slide. Someone else writes it.
That split runs through investors’ portfolios too. In a portfolio of a few million dollars, Microsoft, Google and Nvidia usually show up several times over, in index funds, tech funds and retirement accounts. Do you know your total? A Trefis partner firm can add it up with you in a free 15-minute call.
Didn’t Microsoft See It Coming?
It did, earlier than almost anyone. It put $1 billion into OpenAI in July 2019 and has committed $13 billion in all. When ChatGPT launched in November 2022, Microsoft looked like AI’s big winner.
What it didn’t get was the most valuable model. Anthropic, which Microsoft didn’t back until 2025, has filed to go public, and buyers are discussing a value of about $1.2 to $1.3 trillion. Microsoft owns about 24% of OpenAI. The other 76% is worth about $950 billion at OpenAI’s latest price. Add Anthropic, and at least $2 trillion of AI model value sits outside Microsoft.
In 2025, businesses spent more on Anthropic’s models than anyone else’s, by Menlo Ventures’ estimate: 40% of the market, against 27% for OpenAI and 21% for Google. Two years earlier OpenAI had about half. Microsoft now pays the rival: it committed up to $5 billion to Anthropic in November 2025.
Did Microsoft Stock Pay For It?
| Since ChatGPT (Nov 30, 2022) | Return, with dividends |
|---|---|
| Nvidia: sells the chips | 10.6x |
| Alphabet: owns its model, Gemini | 2.9x |
| Microsoft: rents the models | 2.2x |
| S&P 500 (price only) | 1.9x |
Microsoft beat the market. Google, widely doubted on AI in 2023, beat Microsoft.
Microsoft missed the model, not the money, so far. It still sells the software and the cloud the AI runs on. The open question is whether whoever owns the model ends up setting the price for everything built on it.
What Should You Ask Next?
- Will Anthropic, OpenAI Or Google Win AI?
- Is Microsoft Stock Worth More Than Its Competitors?
- Is Nvidia Stock Now A Bet On Jensen Huang?
Elections, IPOs and AI winners change the odds, not your plan. If you have $1 million or more invested, get a second opinion on yours in a free 15-minute call with a Trefis partner firm.
For questions about this article or underlying research, email help@trefis.com.