Don't panic! Pan Xing, the founder of Panxing Square, is betting against the trend on Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US): Technology "deeply embedded" is the lifeblood of enterprises, and market concerns are "unfounded".

Bill Ackman, the founder of the well-known hedge fund Pershing Square, announced on Friday that he has completed a new position in Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US) and has listed it as a core holding. Ackman believes that the recent pullback in the stock price of Microsoft Corporation has provided investors with a rare entry opportunity, and that the business resilience of this software giant far exceeds the general market perception. Ackman posted on the X platform that Pershing Square has been gradually building a position in Microsoft Corporation since February of this year, with the relevant holding information to be officially disclosed in Friday's regulatory filing. He did not disclose the specific position size, but stated that Microsoft Corporation has become one of the core holdings of his fund. As of Thursday's close, the stock price of Microsoft Corporation has fallen by 15% year-to-date. There are still significant doubts in the market regarding the adoption progress of the company's AI assistant Copilot, and whether its core 365 business can resist competition. In addition, Microsoft Corporation also faces bottlenecks in data center expansion, making it difficult to fully meet the rapid growth demands of cloud services. "365+Azure": Two irreplaceable enterprise technology engines Ackman emphasized in his post that Microsoft Corporation's 365 suite (including Word, Excel, etc.) has been "deeply embedded" in the daily operations of large global enterprises, with its underlying company infrastructure "virtually irreplicable." Macro data confirms this assessment. According to data from Medha Cloud as of March 2026, Microsoft Corporation 365 has approximately 446 million paid seats globally, holding about 58% of the market share in the enterprise market (with more than 1,000 employees), with as high as 75% of Fortune 500 companies using Microsoft Corporation 365 as their main productivity suite. At the same time, the demand for Azure cloud services remains strong, and recent concerns in the market about its growth slowing down are "largely unnecessary." The latest financial data shows that Azure achieved a 40% year-on-year growth in the third quarter of the 2026 fiscal year, driving Microsoft Corporation's AI business to an annualized revenue run rate of $37 billion, with a year-on-year growth rate of 123%. The company's commercial contract backlog also significantly increased to $627 billion. Against the backdrop of a 35% year-on-year growth in the global cloud infrastructure services market in the first quarter, Azure firmly holds the second position in the global cloud market with a market share of about 21%-25%. Ackman refers to 365 and Azure as the "two most valuable franchise rights in the enterprise technology field." Furthermore, Ackman points out that Microsoft Corporation's leading businesses including LinkedIn and Xbox further broaden its moat. OpenAI collaboration adjustment is not a concession, but a strategic upgrade In April of this year, Microsoft Corporation reached a key agreement with OpenAI, cancelling Microsoft Corporation's exclusive sales rights over OpenAI's AI models. This means that developers of ChatGPT can now directly collaborate with other cloud providers, including Amazon.com, Inc., to provide their AI models and services. This move was widely interpreted by the market as Microsoft Corporation making a "passive concession" in the partnership, and even seen as a significant turning point for OpenAI to break free from the shackles of giants and seek greater commercial freedom. Ackman has a different view on this. He believes that this is not a compromise by Microsoft Corporation, but rather a "strategically considered shift" - Microsoft Corporation is actively abandoning its closed exclusive model binding strategy in favor of building a more open architecture that supports the coexistence of multiple models. In Ackman's view, this adjustment precisely meets the actual needs of large enterprise customers: enterprises do not want to be locked in by a single model or a single supplier, but rather hope to flexibly utilize the most suitable AI capabilities in different scenarios. By allowing OpenAI models to be deployed across multiple clouds, while also actively integrating other mainstream models (such as Meta's Llama), Microsoft Corporation is aiming to create a more compatible and choice-based enterprise AI ecosystem. Ackman emphasizes that this "open as strategy" approach actually helps solidify Microsoft Corporation's central position in enterprise services, rather than weaken its moat. This judgment of his also continues his long-standing optimistic stance on the structural value of artificial intelligence - the real winners are not companies locked into a single model, but tech giants that can build open platforms and aggregate various capabilities. Continuing the investment theme of "underestimation of tech giants" Microsoft Corporation is a relatively late addition to Ackman's large-cap tech stock portfolio. Pershing Square currently holds large positions in Alphabet Inc. Class C parent company Alphabet (GOOGL.US), Amazon.com, Inc. (AMZN.US), and Meta Platforms (META.US). Looking back at Ackman's investment trajectory, his logic has been consistent: when the market overreacts to short-term difficulties faced by tech giants, he adds positions in a contrarian manner, betting on the long-term structural growth potential. When establishing a position in Meta, he expressed that investors underestimated the long-term upside potential of the company's AI-driven business. When establishing a position in Amazon.com, Inc., he predicted that its cloud business would emerge from the quagmire of slowing growth. Year to date, Meta's stock price has fallen by 6.3%, while Amazon.com, Inc.'s stock price has accumulated a 16% increase. Whether Microsoft Corporation can replicate the latter's market performance is now becoming a focal point of investor attention.