Microsoft in the Crosshairs as the Musk-Altman Courtroom Battle Gets Underway

The Musk vs. Altman trial is officially underway, and the company with the most to lose outside the courtroom is Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction). Shares are trading near $424.82, with the stock down 12% year to date heading into tomorrow’s earnings release after the close.

Microsoft holds an estimated 27% stake in OpenAI valued at roughly $135 billion, and OpenAI has contracted to purchase an incremental $250 billion of Azure services under the restructured deal. Microsoft’s IP rights to OpenAI models now run through 2032, including post-AGI systems. Net gains from OpenAI investments contributed $7.6 billion to GAAP net income in Q2 FY2026.

Musk’s claims center on OpenAI’s for-profit conversion and alleged fiduciary breaches. A ruling that unwinds or constrains that conversion could complicate Microsoft’s equity carry, the Azure compute backlog, and the Copilot roadmap that anchors Microsoft 365 monetization.

The base case is that Microsoft has been quietly de-risking. The recently amended partnership lets OpenAI serve customers across Amazon and Google clouds, while Microsoft can pursue partnerships with other AI entities, notably Anthropic. In-house models, Mistral, and a growing model garden mean Azure is no longer single-threaded on OpenAI.

Let’s watch the stock together in Wednesday’s earnings. Polymarket pegs an earnings beat at 93.8%, and Barclays just reiterated a Buy with a $600 price target. Headline risk from the trial is real, but Azure growth guided at 37% to 38% is the variable that ultimately moves the stock. The trial is the noise; the cloud number is the signal.