Microsoft books $3.2B Anthropic stake gain
Microsoft's Q4 FY2026 earnings recorded a $3.2 billion gain on its Anthropic investment, adding 33 cents to diluted EPS, while its OpenAI stake was a mixed bag.
In its fiscal fourth-quarter 2026 earnings, covering the period ending June 30, Microsoft disclosed that its investment in Anthropic produced a $3.2 billion gain for the quarter, adding 33 cents to diluted earnings per share (Microsoft reported $4.81 in diluted EPS for the quarter overall). Microsoft invested $5 billion in Anthropic in November 2025 as part of a circular deal under which Anthropic committed to buying $30 billion of Azure services. TechCrunch reports Microsoft’s separate stake in OpenAI produced comparatively mixed results the same quarter.
What it means for operators
Microsoft holds large equity positions in both of the labs many enterprise AI stacks are built on, and its own accounting now shows daylight between how those two bets are performing. That’s a data point worth factoring in if you’re weighing platform risk across OpenAI and Anthropic: Microsoft’s balance sheet is effectively pricing one of them more favorably than the other this quarter, even as it continues selling Azure compute to both.