Microsoft Stock Dropped 30% From Its All-Time High: 2 Reasons It Could Double by 2030
Microsoft Stock Dropped 30% From Its All-Time High: 2 Reasons It Could Double by 2030
John Bromels, The Motley FoolSun, August 23, 2026 at 11:44 AM UTC
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Key Points -
Analysts at J.P. Morgan believe that Microsoft stock could see massive growth in the coming year.
The company's cloud platform, Azure, and its AI assistant, Copilot, are already driving significant revenue gains.
Given this trajectory, Microsoft's share price could easily double by 2030.
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The market left Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) for dead earlier this year.
In June, shares of the tech giant were trading down 30% from their all-time highs, and over the last three years, the stock's performance has lagged the S&P 500, which has grown 76.4% to Microsoft's 53%.
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But that could be changing. After a stellar earnings report, Microsoft's stock popped. And analysts at J.P. Morgan think there's more growth in store, raising their 2027 price target for Microsoft's stock from $550 per share to $625 per share. That's a 30% premium to its current price of about $480.
Could Microsoft's share really double in value, reaching $960 per share by 2030?
Yes, it could, for 2 big reasons.
Image source: Getty Images.
Reason No. 1: Microsoft is competitive where it counts, and on the sidelines where it doesn't
Artificial intelligence (AI) hyperscalers like Microsoft, Amazon(NASDAQ: AMZN), and Google parent Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOG)(NASDAQ: GOOGL) have been criticized for excessive AI spending. Much of that spending has been on data center infrastructure to support AI computing, but the companies have also been developing AI tools that make use of that infrastructure.
For all three companies, these include agentic AI features that can be used by developers working on their respective cloud computing platforms. These three platforms (Microsoft's Azure, Amazon's AWS, and Alphabet's Google Cloud) are in direct competition with one another, and Azure has long been in the No. 2 slot. However, all three platforms are seeing revenue and net income soar, which the companies attribute to the introduction of AI features.
In the most recent quarter, revenue from Azure and Microsoft's other cloud services increased 43% year over year. It's a good sign that Azure is posting massive growth despite stiff competition. If it can sustain that growth rate over the medium term, its Azure revenue in 2030 would be nearly 6 times what it was in 2025.
Meanwhile, Alphabet's Google Gemini chatbot is locked in fierce competition with Anthropic's Claude and OpenAI's ChatGPT. All three companies are devoting significant resources to the continuous improvement of their models. But Microsoft doesn't have to worry about that particular arms race. It owns a stake in Anthropic -- and just recorded a $3.2 billion gain from that investment in its last quarter -- but it doesn't need to spend big on a chatbot with an uncertain ROI.
Image source: Getty Images.
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Reason No. 2: Copilot could be a game-changing innovation ... and it works
Microsoft's AI assistant Copilot is integrated into Microsoft 365 applications like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Right now, Copilot doesn't really have any competition. Google has a product called Gemini Spark that can theoretically perform agentic tasks in Google Workspace apps like Google Docs and Google Sheets, but I've never been able to get it to work.
Last week, for example, I successfully and seamlessly used Copilot to create and animate multiple objects in a PowerPoint slide show. It took about three minutes to perform a task that would have taken me half an hour using other programs. This week, I tried giving the same prompt to Gemini Spark. Instead of creating the animation, Spark created a 10-slide Google Slides deck containing step-by-step instructions on how to create the animation. One slide featured the instruction, "Click the button to simulate the transition between Slide 1 and Slide 2," alongside a button that literally did nothing. Fail!
According to SQ Magazine, Microsoft 365 has nearly 345 million paid subscribers worldwide. In Microsoft's latest quarterly earnings release, CEO Satya Nadella revealed that Copilot has reached over 30 million paid seats, about 9% of users. It's plausible that number could double or even triple as Microsoft 365 users start to recognize the value of Copilot's time-saving features. That would translate to at least tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue, all of which stays with the company instead of going to third parties, helping Microsoft's AI investment to pay for itself.
Why the numbers add up
J.P. Morgan analyst Samik Chatterjee believes that demand for Microsoft Copilot could bring in as much as $41 billion in additional revenue all on its own, even without factoring in revenue from sales of AI credits. He also expects Azure's revenue growth to accelerate while margins stabilize, supporting further earnings growth. Meanwhile, Microsoft appears to be keeping its AI spend in check, which was a big reason the stock shot upward after its latest earnings report.
All these factors indicate that Microsoft's stock could easily double by 2030. That said, there's still a lot of uncertainty around the AI market's trajectory. But even if Microsoft doesn't quite eke out a double, its solid AI offerings and strong competitive position make it likely to be a long-term winner.
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JPMorgan Chase is an advertising partner of Motley Fool Money. John Bromels has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Source: “AOL Money”
