NEW YORK, May 15, 2026, 09:05 EDT
- Bill Ackman plans to reveal Pershing Square’s new stake in Microsoft later Friday, describing the tech giant’s valuation as “highly compelling.” Reuters
- Just weeks after Pershing Square Inc. and Pershing Square USA wrapped up a $5 billion combined IPO and kicked off trading on the NYSE, the move lands.
- Microsoft’s bet on AI, along with Azure’s pace and its evolving OpenAI partnership, are still at the center of the trade.
Pershing Square Inc. ramped up its exposure to big tech Friday, with Bill Ackman revealing the firm’s fresh stake in Microsoft. Ackman is backing the software giant’s artificial-intelligence ambitions, stepping in after a notable slide in Microsoft shares.
Ackman said Pershing Square plans to reveal its position later today, calling Microsoft’s valuation “highly compelling.” Shares of Microsoft last changed hands at $409.43 ahead of the U.S. open, up roughly 1% from the previous session’s close. Reuters
Timing is key here. On April 30, Pershing Square Inc.—the parent of Pershing Square Capital Management—along with its new U.S.-listed closed-end fund, Pershing Square USA, wrapped up a $5 billion IPO and private placement. This move opens the door for public investors to tap directly into Ackman’s focused stock-picking playbook.
That setup didn’t land smoothly with investors out of the gate. On April 29, Pershing Square Inc. began trading on the NYSE at $24. Over at Pershing Square USA, shares opened at $42, which was well under the fund’s $50 offering price—this is before factoring in those bonus management-company shares distributed to IPO buyers.
Ackman told investors Pershing started picking up Microsoft shares in February, right after a post-earnings dip tied to a slowdown in cloud growth and higher capex. Microsoft’s Azure platform is at the heart of its cloud operations, while M365 bundles its Office software together with Copilot, the AI assistant that runs $30 per month.
This is hardly a straightforward AI win for Microsoft. Back in April, the company announced a massive $190 billion capital spending plan for 2026, heavily slanted toward AI infrastructure. Still, investors have been skeptical—Copilot uptake and cloud revenues remain under scrutiny as they try to size up whether the investment makes sense.
And then there’s what happens with OpenAI. After renegotiating their agreement, Microsoft no longer holds exclusive rights to sell the ChatGPT developer’s AI models—opening a path for OpenAI to cut cloud deals with competitors like Amazon. That takes some shine off a partnership many had viewed as Microsoft’s big advantage in the AI battle.
Ackman pushed back on any suggestion of defeat, calling Microsoft’s move to revamp its OpenAI collaboration “not as a concession,” but rather “a deliberate pivot toward a more open, multi-model architecture that better serves enterprise customers.” He cast the change as a strategic shift, not a setback. Reuters
Competition is tightening. According to Reuters, Google Cloud outpaced Microsoft’s Azure in growth for the most recent quarter. Meta, for its part, bumped its 2026 capital spending outlook higher, with additional investments headed for AI infrastructure.
Still, not everyone was pessimistic about the battered stock. “Ackman’s stake aligns with our view that Microsoft has scope to re-rate from current levels,” said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, speaking to Reuters. Britzman pointed out that Microsoft shares are sitting near decade lows. Reuters
Pershing Square Holdings, the London-listed arm of Pershing Square, reported Thursday that net asset value stood at $81.55 per share as of May 12. Year-to-date, the fund’s performance has dropped 4.2%, according to the company.
There’s no mistaking the risk here. Should Microsoft’s AI investments fail to deliver higher-margin revenue—or if OpenAI starts routing more business over to Amazon, Google, or others—the stock could remain depressed, leaving Pershing’s new position as an early, high-profile test of Ackman’s post-IPO call.
How much weight the test carries depends on the size of the stake. If Pershing Square’s Microsoft position is substantial, it cements Microsoft as the firm’s core tech play, much like previous moves with Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta. A smaller stake, though, would look less like a foundational bet and more like a message from Ackman himself.
