What do the IPOs for SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic mean for Microsoft?

The AI IPO tsunami on the stock market has only recently gotten under way, with SpaceX’s more-than-2 trillion IPO likely to be followed in several months by OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s IPOs — each of which is likely to hit 1 trillion. That will mint three new trillion-dollar AI companies in a matter of months, all of which compete with Microsoft. Wall Street has never seen anything like it. Previously, the most money raised by all IPOs in a single year was 671 billion in 2021. It took 38,644 deals to get to that figure. Compare that to three deals this year that by themselves will likely total 4 trillion. The numbers are eye-popping. For Microsoft though, it’s not the numbers themselves that are important. It’s what will happen to the company once it as three newly minted trillion-dollar AI competitors. Until recently, when it came to AI, Microsoft was king of the hill. But can it keep that place? Microsoft’s weakened position The IPOs come at a particularly fraught time for Microsoft. At one point, it was the most valuable AI company in the world, with a big head start on the tech industry. No longer. Microsoft’s stock price has tanked in the past 12 months, even as the SP index has soared. In the last year, Microsoft’s stock price has dropped 24, while the SP has jumped 24. The two were pretty much in sync until last fall.. Microsoft has fared even worse against its most powerful AI competitor, Google. In June 2025, Google’s total value was 2.1 trillion, well behind Microsoft’s 3.57 trillion. By mid-June this year Google was worth 4.5 trillion, Microsoft, 2.8 trillion. That’s entirely due to Google’s AI push and Microsoft’s failure to improve Copilot significantly. Matt Vellosso, who worked for Microsoft for 14 years — including four as technical advisor to CEO Satya Nadella and then as Partner Director for fostering AI innovation in Windows before leaving in 2023 — is scathing about what he views as Microsoft’s AI failures. He warned: “Microsoft missed the internet wave, the mobile wave and now it missed the AI wave.” Show me the money The most immediate likely impact on Microsoft after the three massive IPOs take place will be on the company’s stock price, which could well take another hit. Investors don’t want to miss out on the AI boom, and until now, there’s been a relatively small number of companies in which they could. When Anthropic and OpenAI join SpaceX as publicly traded companies, investors will have three more choices than they did only a few months ago. That could make it tougher for Microsoft to attract AI-focused investors. And that, in turn, could knock down its stock price. A lower stock price means the company will have a harder time raising money when it needs it. In addition, Microsoft won’t be able to as easily buy other companies in stock-only deals, because the value of its stock will be less. Still, the IPOs are not all bad news for Microsoft’s stock position. It does, after all, own 27 of OpenAI. So if OpenAI is valued at 1 trillion after its IPO, Microsoft has a 270 billion stake in it. Thumbs up for increased Azure revenue One area where these mega IPOs should be unalloyed good news for Microsoft is in Azure revenue, which should significantly. Microsoft’s final divorce settlement with OpenAI requires the latter to buy 250 billion in Azure services through 2030. And its estimated trillion-dollar valuation ensures the company will be around for the long term, meaning Microsoft can count on that revenue — and possibly more on an ongoing basis. Microsoft will likely also get tens of billions of dollars from Anthropic for Azure cloud services. Anthropic might spend 43 billion annually on Azure cloud services by 2030, according to estimates by HSBC, one of the world’s largest banking and financial services companies. Thumbs down for the effect on Copilot Although Azure use will boom thanks to the IPOs, Microsoft’s own Copilot could face significant competition at a time when it’s having serious problems gaining traction. In its April 2026 earnings call, the company said Microsoft 365 Copilot had 20 million paid seats. That’s up from 15 million paid seats as of January, but still a minuscule number, considering Microsoft has 450 million Microsoft 365 commercial subscribers. That means only about 4 of the company’s business customers have been willing to pay for it since its launch in late 2023. Beyond that, developers have been leaving GitHub Copilot and turning to Anthropic’s Claude Code and SpaceX’s recently purchased Cursor. A survey by the software development company JetBrains of more than 10,000 developers found that 29 used GitHub Copilot, 18 used Cursor and 18 used Claude Code. Early in 2025, GitHub Copilot had a commanding 67 market share. More downside than up from the IPOs Although the IPOs do have some upside for Microsoft — dramatically increased Azure revenue and several hundred billion dollars in OpenAI stock holdings — mostly, they’re bad news thanks to increased competition. Unless Microsoft significantly improves Copilot for businesses, developers and consumers, the company’s one-time AI dominance will erode even further.