Microsoft is turning 50

Microsoft will turn 50 this coming May. Photo: Official Microsoft Blog .

Since its founding in 1975, Microsoft has continually shaped the way society uses technology, from revolutionizing personal computing with Office and Windows, to entertaining the gaming community with Xbox.

In recent years, under the leadership of CEO Satya Nadella, the company has maintained its dominance in cloud computing with Azure and pioneered the AI ​​race with a billion-dollar investment in OpenAI.

The 50th anniversary, coming up in May, marks a long journey for the tech giant, as it grapples with the challenges of maintaining its competitive edge and innovating in a time of change.

CEO Satya Nadella's Bet

In late 2022, Satya Nadella made a decision that would define his career: He poured billions of dollars into OpenAI while restructuring Microsoft around artificial intelligence. At first, the move looked like a stroke of strategic genius. While Google, Apple, and Meta struggled to catch up, Microsoft seemed to have the lead.

After gaining a leading edge in the AI ​​craze, the Wall Street financial community has praised the company's strategy, helping Microsoft's market capitalization increase by more than $1 trillion .

But as 2025 begins, Microsoft faces a series of challenges in its AI strategy, including data center downsizing, stock performance lagging tech rivals, growing tensions with OpenAI, and a market showing signs of waning interest in AI.

Despite having deftly weathered previous industrial revolutions, these challenges signal that their biggest gamble is faltering.

Microsoft shares have fallen about 16 percent since hitting an all-time high of nearly $467 in July 2024, according to CNBC . The stock nearly posted its first eight-week losing streak since the 2008 financial crisis before being saved by a last-minute bounce on March 21.

More notably, while other AI-focused tech giants are seeing strong growth, Microsoft's stock price is down 7% in 2025, making the company the only member of the "Magnificent 7" group that is not up.

The Magnificent 7 is a group of large technology corporations, including Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. Photo: AMG National Trust.

Internally, Microsoft has canceled data centers that were expected to serve as processors for the next generation of AI. According to Semafor , Microsoft also opted not to spend $12 billion to expand data center capacity from cloud computing company Coreweave.

The moves suggest that the company has quietly pulled back on its AI infrastructure plans due to oversupply, something Satya Nadella himself indirectly acknowledged on a podcast called Dwarkesh .

Double Trouble in AI

According to The Information , Microsoft's AI chief Mustafa Suleyman is facing a double whammy. He must maintain an increasingly deteriorating relationship while also developing the company's AI so that it no longer depends on OpenAI.

Microsoft has now begun developing its own line of AI models (internally called MAI) and testing on rival models like Anthropic, xAI, DeepSeek, and Meta to find an OpenAI alternative to Copilot.

On the other hand, Copilot has yet to receive significant market attention. A Gartner survey found that many companies have not actually expanded Copilot beyond the pilot phase for reasons such as “difficulty in measuring tangible business impact,” or “requiring more effort than expected.”

Copilot AI is also not highly regarded in the market. Photo: Microsoft.

Not only Microsoft, but AI companies in general also face the challenge of attracting more users. According to the Fall 2024 Slack Workforce Index , the growth rate of AI adoption in the US workforce (only 3% in 3 months) has slowed significantly compared to the nearly double-digit growth in the same period last year.

On the eve of its 50th anniversary, Microsoft is at a critical crossroads. Its AI strategy is contradictory: cutting back on infrastructure while developing its own models and maintaining partnerships.

It can be seen that the company is spreading the risk across different strategies instead of betting big on AI like before. This also reflects the uncertainty of the AI ​​market in the coming time.

Source: https://znews.vn/microsoft-sap-tron-50-tuoi-post1542314.html