Microsoft logs $3.2B from Anthropic investment, but OpenAI was a mixed bag
TechCrunch Julie Bort ● Covered by 4 sources
Microsoft's Anthropic stake just made $3.2B in one quarter, way more than OpenAI managed all year. Meanwhile OpenAI's value actually dropped $600M last quarter.
Based on reporting by TechCrunch, Julie Bort — read the original for the full story.
Summary, retelling and take written by AI under human oversight; images are AI-generated illustrations. How we work · Report an error
Microsoft's earnings report this week had a small line item that says a lot about where the AI money is really flowing. Buried in its otherwise blowout fiscal Q4 2026 numbers, the company revealed that its stake in Anthropic generated a $3.2 billion gain for the quarter, adding 33 cents to diluted earnings per share. That's real money, not a rounding error, and it's tied to the $5 billion Microsoft put into Anthropic back in November 2025 as part of a deal where Anthropic also committed to buying $30 billion in Azure cloud services.
Compare that to OpenAI, the company Microsoft has poured far more money and years of partnership into. Microsoft owns roughly 27% of OpenAI, and this quarter that stake lost value, forcing a $600 million write-down that shaved about 7 cents off EPS. Zoom out to the full fiscal year, though, and OpenAI still posted a $5 billion gain, adding 67 cents to annual EPS. So on a yearly basis OpenAI comes out ahead of the single-quarter Anthropic pop, but just barely, and that's the part Microsoft itself seemed to want people to notice.
Microsoft doesn't usually bother updating the Anthropic valuation every quarter, unlike its routine disclosures on OpenAI. The fact that it chose to spell this one out suggests the company knows the optics matter. Getting nearly a full year's worth of OpenAI gains from Anthropic in just three months is the kind of detail that fuels speculation about which lab Microsoft sees as the safer or faster-growing bet, even if Redmond would never phrase it that way publicly.
None of this changes Microsoft's overall financial picture much. The company posted $90 billion in quarterly revenue and $35.8 billion in net income, with full-year revenue at $331.8 billion and net income of $133.7 billion. A $600 million OpenAI markdown barely registers against numbers that size. But the juxtaposition of two competing AI labs, both partly bankrolled by the same tech giant, producing such different quarterly returns is the kind of detail that tells you more about the AI funding landscape than any press release ever could.
My take — AI-written commentary, not fact-checked reporting
I think Microsoft dropped this comparison on purpose, and it's a subtle signal that Anthropic's stock is rising fast in Redmond's eyes even as the OpenAI relationship gets more complicated and less exclusive. Circular deals where you invest in a company that then buys your cloud services back should always raise an eyebrow, and this is a textbook case of that accounting loop making numbers look better than the underlying business reality might be.
Read more about this at: TechCrunch