MSFT Stock Heads For Weekly Drop: CEO Satya Nadella Says Azure Customers Are Already Using OpenAI’s New Astra AI Model
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OpenAI launched its long-awaited GPT-6 Astra AI model on Thursday.Nadella sold $43 million worth of Microsoft shares under a pre-approved plan earlier this week.Microsoft revealed Azure unit financials for the first time.Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Thursday said that early customers had begun using OpenAI’s newly launched GPT-6 Astra AI model on Azure, highlighting the cloud platform’s role in bringing OpenAI’s latest AI capabilities to enterprise customers.“Excited to see early customers already using Astra on Azure,” Nadella said in an X post, shortly after Microsoft announced that the model had started rolling out through the Microsoft Foundry Limited Access Program. Microsoft said availability will expand to additional participating customers over the coming days. The development comes as Microsoft stock heads for a weekly decline, with the stock down 0.7% so far this week. OpenAI Launches Astra AI ModelOpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra on Thursday, describing it as its most capable model for complex, end-to-end work. Astra is designed to go beyond conventional chatbot interactions by reasoning through multi-step problems, creating plans, using tools, and executing tasks across software applications. A key capability is computer use, which lets Astra interpret information on a screen and interact with applications on a user’s behalf. It can work across browsers and professional software, while also creating documents, spreadsheets and presentations based on templates and instructions. The initial rollout remains limited, with OpenAI also making Astra available first to a restricted group of organizations before expanding access through its API and paid ChatGPT plans.Microsoft CEO Sells StockNadella sold over $43 million worth of company stock under a pre-arranged trading plan, marking his first sale of the year. The trades were made on Sept. 1 at a per-share price between $497.69 and $505.76.Executives routinely sell stock under 10b5-1 plans, and Nadella had adopted his current plan in March.Microsoft shares have moved largely sideways in recent weeks and has underperformed the broader market this year. The stock is up 6.5% year to date, compared with a 13% gain in the benchmark S&P 500.Microsoft Reveals Azure FinancialsIn the context of AI, Microsoft made a big change to its financial reporting structure earlier this week.The Windows maker said it will begin reporting quarterly sales figures for its Azure cloud unit and also provided figures covering the last eight quarters.Total annual sales for Azure topped $100 billion during the most recent fiscal year, up from $75 billion the previous year. Azure clocked $29.4 billion in the most recent quarter that ended on June 30.Retail View On MSFTOn Stocktwits, the retail sentiment for MSFT was ‘bearish’ as of early Friday, unchanged over the past week.“Microsoft's AI strategy isn't "pick a winner." It's three roads that all lead to the same place,” said a trader in a long post explaining their Microsoft AI thesis. “It invests in OpenAI and Anthropic — equity upside, plus Azure demand when they scale. It rents out Azure — compute fees no matter who's building. It builds its own MAI models — lower model costs, in-house optionality. All three sit on top of something Microsoft already had before the AI boom: a customer base already running Word, Excel, Outlook, Teams, GitHub. Copilot just plugs AI into that.”https://stocktwits.com/3minutegiants/message/663511540MSFT stock was down 0.2% in overnight trading ahead of Friday. For updates and corrections, email newsroom[at]stocktwits[dot]com.Read Next: ORCL Stock Spikes On New HPE Equipment Deal: Retail Turns Bullish Ahead Of Q1 Report
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