New York, January 16, 2026, 16:04 EST — After-hours
- Microsoft shares closed up 0.9% on Friday, outpacing a flat broader market.
- Microsoft-backed OpenAI said it will start testing ads in ChatGPT in coming weeks.
- Regulators in Switzerland and Italy opened new probes touching Microsoft’s licensing and gaming units.
Microsoft shares ended higher on Friday after Microsoft-backed OpenAI said it would start testing ads in ChatGPT, a shift that could open a new revenue line for one of the company’s most watched partners.
The move lands as investors reassess how quickly AI products can pay for the data-center buildout behind them, with Microsoft’s own results due later this month. The stock market is also heading into a holiday break and a heavier stretch of earnings.
Microsoft closed up 0.9% at $460.77. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq ended little changed, and a semiconductor index rose, Reuters reported.
“The most important thing is the growth companies and the big technology companies,” Bruce Zaro, managing director at Granite Wealth Management, told Reuters, pointing to the trend-setting role of megacaps as reporting season builds. Reuters
OpenAI said it will test ads for some U.S. users on ChatGPT’s free tier and its lower-priced “Go” plan, with ads showing up in coming weeks and sitting separately from chatbot answers. The company said ads would not influence outputs and that user conversations would not be shared with marketers. Reuters
“If ads feel clumsy or opportunistic, users can easily switch” to rivals such as Google’s Gemini or Anthropic’s Claude, Emarketer analyst Jeremy Goldman said. Reuters
Microsoft has also been in focus after the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s operator, announced partnerships with Microsoft, Meta and Amazon, among others, aimed at paid access for AI training as scraping drives up server costs.
“Wikipedia is a critical component of these tech companies’ work that they need to figure out how to support financially,” Lane Becker, president of Wikimedia Enterprise, told Reuters. Microsoft Corporate Vice President Tim Frank said the deal was meant to help build “a sustainable content ecosystem” for the “AI internet.” Reuters
On the sustainability front, Microsoft agreed with Indigo Carbon to buy 2.85 million soil carbon credits over 12 years, a record deal in that corner of the market, as the company targets being carbon negative by 2030 even as AI pushes up emissions. A person familiar with the deal said the value was between $171 million and $228 million based on historic pricing.
But regulatory risk has been creeping back into the picture in Europe. Switzerland’s competition authority said it opened a preliminary probe into Microsoft’s licensing fees after complaints about significant price hikes, and warned a formal investigation could follow. Microsoft said it would cooperate.
Italy’s competition watchdog said it is investigating Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard unit over what it called “misleading and aggressive” sales practices in “Diablo Immortal” and “Call of Duty Mobile,” pointing to in-app incentives and virtual currencies that it said could push users — including minors — into spending more than intended. Reuters
With U.S. markets shut on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, traders will be watching whether Microsoft holds Friday’s gains when regular trading resumes on Tuesday, and how quickly OpenAI’s ad test rolls out in the “coming weeks.” The next major catalyst on the calendar is Microsoft’s fiscal 2026 second-quarter results on Jan. 28, after the close. Reuters
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