Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) shares are gaining Tuesday. Citizens Securities analyst Patrick Walravens maintained a Market Outperform rating and $550 price target. Here’s what you should know.
- Microsoft stock is building positive momentum. What’s driving MSFT shares up?
Citizens Applauds Microsoft’s Letter on Open Weight AI
The centerpiece of Walravens’s note is a letter from Microsoft urging the Trump administration not to impose sweeping restrictions on open weight AI models. The letter gathered 133 co-signers including Google, Meta, Nvidia, Amazon, OpenAI and SpaceX but conspicuously excluded Anthropic. Walravens reads the document as a window into a deepening fracture forming across the AI industry over who should control how powerful models are built and how freely they can be distributed.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei pushed back the following day, clarifying his company has never advocated for an outright ban on open weight models while standing firm on safety concerns, arguing that authoritarian governments could exploit highly capable AI for military advantage and that guardrails become nearly impossible to enforce once model weights are publicly released.
What Investors Are Watching in Microsoft’s Q4 Earnings Report
The Citizens analyst believes Microsoft stock looks attractive heading into earnings after its significant slide year-to-date. Walravens flagged total revenue, Azure growth in constant currency, capital expenditure levels, Copilot paid seat counts and earnings per share as the metrics that will matter most. On Azure, the firm expects growth to edge higher driven by rising AI workloads.
Microsoft has already guided to more than $40 billion in capital expenditures for the quarter. Copilot paid seats last stood at more than 20 million, up 250% year-over-year, with the largest enterprise deployments growing even faster.
What Microsoft Customers Are Saying About Azure and Copilot
Field research from Citizens gathered ahead of the print showed nine of 13 industry contacts were constructive, pointing to Azure as their primary cloud destination and citing productivity gains that make the ROI case hard to argue with.
On the negative side, some contacts said Microsoft’s AI capabilities lag alternatives, with certain organizations choosing Glean over Copilot for enterprise search and others pulling spending back toward on-premise infrastructure.
Microsoft will report earnings on after the market closes on Wednesday.
MSFT Shares Are Climbing
MSFT Price Action: Microsoft shares were up 2.45% at $398.63 at the time of publication on Tuesday, according to Benzinga Pro.
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