Microsoft заработала $3,2 млрд на доле в Anthropic, но OpenAI дала смешанный результат

Microsoft, in its report for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2026 (ended June 30) published on July 29, 2026, disclosed the results of its investments in two competing AI labs: its stake in Anthropic brought in $3.2 billion in accounting profit, while its investment in OpenAI produced a mixed result.

Where the $3.2 billion came from

Microsoft's $3.2 billion profit came from its stake in Anthropic — the company disclosed this in its quarterly report for the period ended June 30, 2026. The figure is recognized under the equity method: the corporation reflects in its own financials a proportional share of the results of companies in which it holds a significant but non-controlling stake. The growth in Anthropic's value and results materialized for Microsoft as a concrete profit line, rather than remaining a paper valuation for the future.

Notably, Microsoft did not put the figure in the headline of its report but tucked it inside quarterly results that were themselves strong. The disclosure shows how bets on AI startups are gradually moving from the category of "strategic spending" into real financial results.

*Reporting period — Q4 of Microsoft's fiscal year 2026, ended June 30, 2026

*Profit from the Anthropic stake — $3.2 billion

*Accounting method — equity method

*Investment in OpenAI — mixed result

*Anthropic and OpenAI — two of the largest competing AI labs

Why Microsoft is betting on both rivals

Microsoft turned out to be a co-owner of two direct rivals at once: Anthropic (developer of the Claude family of models) and OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT). For OpenAI, the corporation is a longtime and largest outside partner, while it entered Anthropic's capital later. This double bet insures Big Tech against the risk that leadership in the frontier-model market will be taken by only one lab: whichever product wins the race, Microsoft comes out ahead as a shareholder of both sides.

The financial stakes are complemented by product dependence: Microsoft connects the models of both labs to its own services — from the Azure cloud to the Copilot lineup. So the $3.2 billion from Anthropic is not just a one-off revaluation, but part of a broader bet in which the corporation is simultaneously an investor and the largest distribution channel for these models.

Why OpenAI produced a mixed result

The investment in OpenAI, in TechCrunch's wording, turned out to be a "mixed result" — unlike the unambiguous plus from Anthropic. The equity method works both ways: when a portfolio company posts losses, the investor also reflects its share of those losses in its own reporting. OpenAI remains deeply unprofitable and is growing its compute spending faster than its revenue, so its contribution to Microsoft's balance sheet for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, looks different from the profit from Anthropic.

"Microsoft made $3.2 billion on its investment in

Anthropic, but OpenAI was a mixed bag," — headline from TechCrunch following the company's quarterly report.

What it means

The report showed, for the first time this clearly, that Big Tech's investments in AI are ceasing to be a pure expense line and are starting to show up in profit — but unevenly so far. Anthropic is already bringing Microsoft billions on paper, while OpenAI is burning cash to scale. For investors, this is the first measurable gauge of how much Microsoft's bets on artificial intelligence are really worth — and a signal that stakes in generative-AI leaders are starting to work as full-fledged financial assets.

As both labs raise new rounds at ever-higher valuations, lines like this in Big Tech reports will appear more often — and the market will start judging the AI race not just by model releases, but by the numbers in quarterly reports.