On Tuesday, Microsoft signed a $750 million cloud deal with Perplexity. The agreement lets Perplexity deploy OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI models via Foundry to scale Azure usage.
Microsoft shares fell to about $411, down nearly 3% that day. The stock has dropped roughly 24% over six months and shows clear weakness.
The move follows quarterly results that missed analysts’ expectations. Azure grew 39%, below consensus, while personal computing revenue hit $12.6 billion.
Analysts had expected about $13.7 billion for that segment. Analysts at Barchart called the partnership a “winning business.”
Analysts view the Perplexity deal as a potential boost for Azure. Out of 49 analysts, 41 rated the stock “strong buy”, five called “moderate buy”, and three issued “hold”.
CFO Amy Hood said, “If I had taken the GPUs that just came online in Q1 and Q2 and allocated them all to Azure, the KPI would have been over 40%,” noting internal allocation affected results. (Ed. note: Hood indicated internal GPU use limited external Azure growth.)
