New York, January 5, 2026, 16:46 EST — After-hours
- Microsoft said it will acquire Osmos to add agentic AI data engineering capabilities to Microsoft Fabric. 1
- Microsoft shares slipped 0.02% to $472.85 in regular trading and were little changed after the bell.
- Jefferies reiterated a Buy rating and a $675 price target, as investors keep focus on Azure growth and AI monetization. 2
Microsoft said on Monday it will acquire Osmos, an “agentic AI” data engineering platform, adding automation features to its Microsoft Fabric analytics product. Microsoft shares ended down 0.02% at $472.85 and were little changed in after-hours trading. 1
The move matters now because enterprises are trying to turn large pools of data into something usable for analytics and artificial intelligence, and data preparation is often the slowest step. Microsoft is betting that more automation inside Fabric can help keep customers on its stack as they build AI workloads. 1
“Agentic AI” refers to software agents that can plan steps and take actions across tasks, rather than just answer prompts. Osmos will help “turn raw data into analytics and AI-ready assets” inside OneLake, the unified data lake at the core of Fabric, Microsoft said. 1
“With the acquisition of Osmos, we are taking the next step toward a future where autonomous AI agents work alongside people,” Bogdan Crivat, a corporate vice president in Azure Data Analytics, wrote in a blog post announcing the deal. He said the Osmos team will join Microsoft’s Fabric engineering group. 1
Microsoft’s steady close came as U.S. equities broadly advanced, with tech-heavy benchmarks higher. The Invesco QQQ Trust rose about 0.8% and the SPDR S&P 500 ETF added about 0.6% on the day.
On the Street, Jefferies reiterated a Buy rating on Microsoft with a $675 price target, implying roughly 43% upside from current levels, according to an Investing.com report. Analyst Brent Thill flagged Microsoft’s push to integrate AI features across its product portfolio as a long-term driver. 2
Fabric is one of Microsoft’s key pitches to bring data storage, data engineering and analytics under one roof, a market crowded with cloud-native rivals and specialist data platforms. Investors will be watching whether the Osmos technology adds measurable lift to Fabric adoption, especially among large enterprise customers already using Azure. 1
In its most recent quarterly results, Microsoft said Azure and other cloud services revenue rose 40% year-on-year, underscoring why Azure remains the main swing factor for the stock when it reports. The company has also leaned heavily on “Copilots” — AI assistants built into products — as it pushes for broader adoption. 3
A risk is that acquisitions in fast-moving AI software categories can be hard to integrate cleanly, and new features may take time to translate into incremental revenue. Any sign that AI-related spending is outpacing near-term returns would likely revive investor concerns around execution and margins.
Microsoft shares traded between $469.69 and $476.03 on Monday, setting near-term markers that many short-term traders watch as support and resistance. Next up, investors will track deal integration updates and the broader tech tone as CES 2026 opens in Las Vegas on Jan. 6, while waiting for Microsoft to confirm its next earnings date; some market calendars currently list Jan. 28 after the close. 4
