Nothing can stop Microsoft from its rally. The Windows-maker's price briefly hit $555 at the end of July and then the bubbling stream has been allowed to off-gas for a couple of months staying at over $500 per share while tariff storms raged. This was exactly what has allowed the stock to raise growing investment flows for a triumphant return above $550 as soon as a suitable fundamental opportunity presented itself. The last 4% was covered quickly, within a trading gap on Tuesday, thanks to a new agreement announced with ChatGPT developer OpenAI. According to the news, OpenAI is going to grant Microsoft a $135 billion stake. In exchange for this, OpenAI declared its commitment to purchasing an extra $250 billion in Microsoft's Azure cloud services, even though Microsoft will no longer have first refusal rights as OpenAI’s compute provider.

This partnership is on the verge of controlling power but it does not violate antitrust laws. It began in 2019, with Microsoft now holding 27% ownership in OpenAI. Now it has tremendously expanded after months of negotiations allowing both companies necessary flexibility. OpenAI can jointly develop cutting-edge software like Sora with any third parties, also providing API access to national security customers, regardless of cloud provider. Microsoft will have the right to work independently on AGI (artificial general intelligence) development, alone or with other partners. The software giant keeps extended intellectual property rights through 2032, including rights on models developed after AGI is achieved, with appropriate safety measures in place.

No one, including me, can foresee all the far-reaching consequences of this deal. Besides, it's funny to watch how those kind of deals between AI giants like OpenAI and NVIDIA, then NVIDIA and Oracle, now OpenAI and Microsoft etc. allow each other to enhance their market positioning against many smaller or non-AI businesses, with their actual revenue and profit growth is still nowhere near what each of those companies has projected. Anyway, a $10 to $15 share price pullback could not mislead mid-term investors like me about obvious plans of major financial houses to acquire even larger stakes in Microsoft. The behemoth company's incoming quarterly report could only further spur this investment process, increasing Microsoft's market cap targets by another double-digit percentage number. It seems they will consolidate their leadership in the competitive cloud environment, previously confirmed by phenomenal results in Q2. Perhaps $600 per share is the minimum threshold that I keep in my mind for the next wave's foam to touch it. Further growth to $625 or so may be delayed, as it similarly happened immediately after the summer's spontaneous jump well above $550, but extended rally well above $600 still looks inevitable.