Axel Rietschin, a former Azure Core Compute engineer who spent a year on Azure and eight years on the Windows Base Kernel team, published the fourth installment of his Substack essay series detailing what he calls "how Microsoft vaporized a trillion dollars." His account describes a company that

As Microsoft trades at ~35x forward earnings (a premium to Alphabet at 27x and Apple at 28x), analysts are divided on whether the company's AI investments justify the multiple. The analysis cites Azure AI revenue growth of 31% YoY, 18,000+ organizations on Azure OpenAI Service, and 65%

Microsoft announced a $10 billion investment in Japan spanning 2026–2029, anchored by three pillars: technology infrastructure, security partnerships, and workforce development. The deal includes collaborations with SoftBank and Sakura Internet to expand GPU-based AI compute through Azure while keeping data within Japan's borders — a direct response to