"Will SpaceX's epic IPO be a positive thing for Microsoft Corporation (MSFT.US)? The AI computing power shortage will push Azure into a new round of growth opportunities."

French bank BNP Paribas recently released a research report stating that a major AI cloud computing infrastructure deal was reached between SpaceX and Alphabet's Alphabet Inc. Class C (GOOGL.US) - according to the deal, Alphabet Inc. Class C will pay SpaceX $920 million per month to access AI computing power infrastructure provided by SpaceX, which may prove to global investors that another US cloud computing leader, Microsoft Corporation's Azure cloud computing business, still has strong upward potential. According to BNP Paribas, the "SpaceX - Alphabet Inc. Class C cloud computing deal" conveys a crucially positive market signal: the supply of AI computing power infrastructure remains extremely tight, especially pricing power for cloud-based AI inference computing is tilting towards cloud computing platforms with large-scale schedulable computing resources. In the view of Wall Street analysts who are optimistic about the global "AI super bull market" trend dominated by the AI computing power boom, SpaceX appears more like a beneficiary and amplifier of the AI super bull market, rather than a market-threatening "skimming" terminator. BNP Paribas issued a bullish research report to Microsoft Corporation: stock price to reach $555 Senior analyst Stefan Slowinski from BNP Paribas wrote in a report to clients, "Although we acknowledge that these agreements are intended to be short-term and are being executed in an extremely supply-constrained environment, it still further demonstrates that demand for AI computing power infrastructure remains strong." "We believe that if pricing strengthens upon contract renewal, this could give Microsoft Corporation's Azure cloud platform growth expectations an upside potential, pushing growth rates to the 40% range." Other topics of interest to Slowinski include whether Microsoft Corporation can maintain efficiency gains from its scalable Azure cloud computing resources pool, a factor that has driven the business segment's growth rate to consistently surpass investor expectations over the past few quarters; and whether this strong outperformance can be sustained. He also ponders whether Microsoft Corporation can increase pricing for long-term Azure contracts as AI-related computing power infrastructure contracts enter the renewal phase; given the current "silicon-based inflation effect" happening in memory/storage chips, data center CPUs, and other AI computing power supply chain bottlenecks, this is particularly noteworthy. Analyst Slowinski from BNP Paribas continues to give Microsoft Corporation a "buy" rating and sets a target price of $555. As of the close of the US stock market on Tuesday, Microsoft Corporation's stock price was $403.41, indicating that BNP Paribas is very optimistic about Microsoft Corporation's stock price prospects over the next 12 months. In addition to a more optimistic outlook on cloud computing deals, Slowinski also noted positive improvements in user feedback for Microsoft Corporation's Copilot AI for both consumers and businesses; given that Copilot lags behind OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude, and Alphabet Inc. Class C's Gemini AI application platform, any signs of improvement are worth close attention from investors. Slowinski explained, "We are seeing signs of improvement in Copilot's user feedback, especially among those users who have access to Frontier." "However, these newer features are not always immediately opened up to a wider installed user base, and enterprise deployment cycles may be relatively slow." On the eve of SpaceX's record-breaking IPO, is it time for Microsoft Corporation to be reassessed? If SpaceX's IPO successfully amplifies the bullish narrative of "space AI data center construction + long-term scarcity of AI computing resources," funds are likely to flow back to established cloud computing leaders like Microsoft Corporation, which already have a huge cloud computing platform, mature enterprise customer ecosystem, AI model ecosystem, and certainty in computing power scheduling capabilities. On Tuesday, Eastern Time, media reports citing sources familiar with the matter revealed that SpaceX had attracted over $250 billion in investor subscription demands, far exceeding the record IPO fundraising size of $75 billion planned by the company, potentially making it the largest IPO in history. If SpaceX's share price continues to rise due to index funds and a shortage of floating shares, it may attract more funds and further strengthen the trend of valuation expansion. The $250 billion subscription size itself indicates that global venture capital is still hot for AI computing infrastructure, commercial space exploration, and next-generation focus on AI infrastructure assets. If the market were truly on the brink of liquidity exhaustion, it would be difficult to see nearly 4 times oversubscription. Instead, this means that a large amount of long-term capital, sovereign funds, pension funds, growth funds, and active hedge funds are actively seeking core assets that can support future decade-long growth narratives. According to the latest mainstream views on Wall Street, despite recent sharp declines in global stock prices of AI computing industry chain companies including ARM, Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung, there is currently no pessimistic consensus of "the end of the AI super bull market" on Wall Street. On the contrary, there is a completely different phenomenon: more and more large investment institutions are revising upward their benchmark stock index targets, and the reasons for the upward revisions are almost all related to the capital expenditure wave in AI, the hot progress in AI infrastructure construction, and the profit expansion driven by AI, and they emphasize that the current downturn is a healthy correction. Fundamentally, Microsoft Corporation is no longer supported solely by the AI narrative; the growth trajectory of Microsoft Corporation's Azure cloud computing platform driven by AI is accelerating. In the third quarter of the 2026 fiscal year, Microsoft Corporation's revenue was approximately $82.9 billion, an 18% year-on-year increase, operating profit was approximately $38.4 billion, a 20% year-on-year increase, and earnings per share was $4.27, a 23% year-on-year increase; more importantly, Microsoft Cloud (Microsoft Corporation's cloud computing) total revenue reached $54.5 billion, a 29% year-on-year increase, commercial remaining performance obligations increased by 99% to $627 billion, with Azure and other cloud computing services revenue achieving a 40% year-on-year growth. Microsoft Corporation CEO Nadella also disclosed that Microsoft Corporation's AI-related business has an annualized revenue run rate of over $37 billion, a 123% year-on-year increase. For Wall Street, these figures already indicate that Azure is breaking away from the narrative of "massive money-burning wind-chasing AI" arms race and is beginning to form a revenue generation loop between cloud-based AI computing power infrastructure resources, enterprise AI intelligent agents accelerated deployment, Copilot, AI developer ecosystem, and model services; coupled with contract renewals with higher pricing, there is a space for continued upward revisions in revenue expectations and valuation multiples for Microsoft Corporation's cloud computing business.