In addition to our small research two weeks ago, where we discussed possible arguments in favour of re-establishing appropriate price targets for shares of Microsoft above $500, similar estimates are now finding reputable support from analysts at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and some other flagship investment institutions. Shares of the Windows developer, by the way, have climbed from $435 to almost $460 since then, achieving another double-digit growth.

As we mostly relied upon high and still growing demand for cloud technologies from Microsoft's Azure division as the major catalyst for further growth, Goldman Sachs analyst Kash Rangan also shared his confidence in Microsoft’s AI investments bolstered during the Microsoft Build conference in Seattle, where the tech giant reportedly focused on its $300 billion-plus forecast for its cloud segment revenue by the fiscal year of 2029. The ambitious figure followed the strong uptrend in Microsoft Azure's cloud revenue, which grew at a current pace above 14% YoY. Kash Rangan also admired Microsoft’s rising efficiency in terms of capital expenditure profile, including a 3% reduction in working force, as he called it "a positive development". Rangan especially mentioned a stronger momentum of GitHub Copilot with an AI coding agent from Google-backed startup Anthropic and more than 15 million developers clients already for managing their code bases, an introduction of Copilot agent and Copilot Studio for fine-tuning and orchestrating multiple AI agents, as well as the Foundry service for open agentic web development plus the "ongoing scaling of Azure", which now works in over 70 regions globally. As a result, he just announced an increase in the price target for Microsoft to $550 on Tuesday, May 20, which is a nearly 15% upside revision from Goldman Sachs' previous market value estimate of $480.

More than 20 other analysts of leading investment houses and banks on Wall Street improved Microsoft's earnings estimates upward in May, mostly citing the company’s AI initiatives, deepening platform integration and its commitment to an open agentic AI through the Model Context Protocol (MCP) to form even a more perfect developer tool ecosystem. As an example, Citigroup analysts have raised Microsoft’s price target to $540 from $480 this week, with a Buy rating again. These are all drivers of maintaining Microsoft’s cool leadership, so that the most valuable company in the world is shifting from GenAI infrastructure projects to its various platform application layers, which may mirror the earlier transition "from on-premises to cloud-based solutions", according to Rangan again. Meanwhile, the EU officials are close to accepting Microsoft’s recent proposal to adjust the pricing of its Office products to cut the Gordian knot of a lasting antitrust issue.