NEW YORK, June 1, 2026, 04:13 EDT
- Microsoft finished Friday at $450.24, rising 5.45%. AI stocks lifted Wall Street indexes to record closes.
- Nasdaq’s regular U.S. trading starts at 9:30 a.m. ET. June 1 isn’t shown as a 2026 market holiday on the Nasdaq schedule.
- The next thing to watch is if investors keep backing Microsoft’s AI spending while cloud demand climbs and costs go higher.
Microsoft stock picked up speed going into June after jumping Friday. The move came as buyers returned to AI-related tech names, and Wall Street’s main indexes closed at new highs.
The stock finished Friday at $450.24, up 5.45%. Volume was 77.3 million shares. In after-hours trading, it last changed hands at $449.99, nearly flat from the close.
Why it matters now: Microsoft’s move came with investors once again viewing AI spending as a driver of profit instead of just an expense. The Nasdaq Composite closed up 0.21% at 26,972.62 Friday. The S&P 500 rose 0.22%. The Dow was up 0.72%. The Nasdaq gained 2.39% this week.
“There’s definitely euphoric sentiment in the market around AI. The rally has really been driven by earnings,” Ohsung Kwon, chief equity strategist at Wells Fargo, told Reuters. Dell jumped 32.8% after boosting its full-year outlook, giving the sector another lift. Microsoft added 5.4%, Reuters reported. Reuters
Premarket trading on Nasdaq starts at 4:00 a.m. and goes until 9:30 a.m. Eastern, then regular hours pick up and last until 4:00 p.m. June 1 is not on Nasdaq’s 2026 holiday calendar.
Microsoft is back in the AI hardware mix, according to a weekend report. Axios, via Reuters, said Nvidia and Microsoft are set to roll out the first Windows PCs with Nvidia chips running as the main processor next week. The PCs will include Microsoft’s Surface line and models from Dell and others. The report also said Microsoft plans to show software for running AI agents directly on Windows machines.
Microsoft is still facing the main question with Azure, its cloud computing business. That business rents out computing and software over the internet, not on local servers. Back in April, Microsoft projected Azure and other cloud-services revenue would rise 39% to 40% in constant currency for the fiscal fourth quarter. That was ahead of the 36.7% from Visible Alpha, according to Reuters.
Microsoft’s latest figures gave bulls a lift. The company said fiscal third-quarter revenue rose 18% to $82.9 billion. Microsoft Cloud revenue climbed 29% to $54.5 billion. CEO Satya Nadella said its AI business topped a $37 billion annual run rate, pointing to the current sales pace annualized.
Morgan Stanley’s Keith Weiss stuck with his Overweight rating and $650 target on Microsoft, writing that the company is “deploying AI-specific capacity ahead of the associated monetization cycle,” TipRanks reported. Weiss’s call is simple: Microsoft is spending now, building up its data centers, and banking on revenue to come. TipRanks
AI spending hits Microsoft margins. The company reported its gross margin percentage fell, citing ongoing investment in AI infrastructure and higher AI product usage. Operating expenses also moved up, with Microsoft pointing to more R&D compute, AI talent and data costs.
Competition is heating up. Reuters said Google Cloud’s growth outpaced Azure in the latest period, though Google is smaller. Amazon now offers OpenAI’s new models and Codex coding tool on its cloud. That means Microsoft’s edge with OpenAI isn’t as exclusive as before.
Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said to analysts the company is “confident in the return” from its AI investments, citing rising demand and product use, according to Reuters. Next up is whether margins, capex, or signs of Copilot use outside initial corporate pilots live up to that. Reuters
Microsoft could drop some of Friday’s gains if the market goes defensive on Monday, or if yields and inflation push investors out of big tech names. A weaker rollout of AI products among large clients would also make the company’s $190 billion capital-spending plan tougher to justify, even with Microsoft’s strong balance sheet.
Right now, the stock isn’t acting like a typical software play. It’s trading on the question of whether AI infrastructure actually turns into high-margin software sales. That’s the risk here. The opening June session is set to test just how much patience still remains after Friday’s action.
