Microsoft shares dip amid AI disruption fears – but is the market overreacting?

Microsoft's (US:MSFT) investors were slightly unsettled by news that the tech giant’s Azure cloud computing business posted a slowdown in quarterly growth. The reality is, however, that the pullback in the share price during results week had less to do with the group’s performance than it did with analyst concerns over the efficacy of industry capex commitments following the launch of China’s bargain basement DeepSeek artificial intelligence (AI) app.

Microsoft is a major stakeholder in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT. It also utilises Nvidia’s (US:NVDA) high-end chips, so it’s hardly surprising that it got caught up in the brouhaha, although it’s quite possible that the market over-reacted to the threat of disruption in the AI space.