Microsoft's second-quarter 2026 financial report released on Wednesday showed that despite occasional fluctuations in its partnership with OpenAI, this long-term investment has brought extremely generous returns. Due to OpenAI's capital restructuring last October, Microsoft's net income for this quarter increased significantly by $7.6 billion.
The Deeply-Integrated "Bill": A $250 Billion Commitment
As OpenAI transformed into a non-profit company and renegotiated its agreements, the two companies' interests became even more closely aligned. The report revealed that Microsoft's commercial remaining performance obligations (RPO) surged from $392 billion in the previous quarter to $625 billion, with approximately 45% (over $28 billion) attributed to OpenAI. This includes OpenAI's commitment to purchase Azure cloud services worth $25 billion over the next few years, providing Microsoft with high revenue certainty.
Not a Single Bet: Anthropic Becomes a New Growth Driver
In addition to OpenAI, another key player in Microsoft's AI strategy, Anthropic, also performed impressively.
Business Surge: Anthropic's commercial bookings grew by 230% year-over-year.
Large Computing Orders: After a $5 billion investment in November last year, Anthropic has signed agreements to purchase Azure computing resources worth $30 billion and plans to continue increasing its purchases.
Performance Overview: Cloud Business Milestone
Microsoft's overall financial performance for this quarter far exceeded Wall Street's expectations:
Total Revenue: Reached $81.3 billion (expected $80.27 billion), up 17% year-over-year.
Key Highlights: Microsoft's cloud business revenue for a single quarter first surpassed $50 billion, up 26% year-over-year.
Capital Investment: To support AI demand, Microsoft's capital expenditures reached $37.5 billion this quarter, with two-thirds directly used for purchasing short-term assets such as GPUs and CPUs.
Although some business segments like Xbox and Windows experienced sluggish growth, the strong momentum of AI and cloud services has enabled Microsoft to successfully transform into an AI-driven computing giant.
