Billionaire investor Bill Ackman said his hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, has initiated a new position in Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT), according to a post on the social media platform X ahead of an upcoming 13F filing.
“As two of the largest forces in equity markets — growing index ownership and increasing amounts of capital controlled by extremely short-term-oriented, leveraged, volatility-intolerant investors — converge, we have found occasional opportunities to acquire some of the most dominant long-term compounding franchises at attractive valuations,” Ackman wrote.
He added that his firm has previously built positions in major technology companies during periods of market volatility, including Alphabet, Amazon and Meta.
“In our 13F which we will file later today, we will disclose a new position in Microsoft, a company we have followed for many years now offered at a highly compelling valuation,” he wrote, also noting that “While $PSUS will not be filing a 13F tomorrow, it has also recently made $MFST a core holding.”
Ackman pointed to Microsoft’s enterprise software and cloud businesses as central to his investment case. “Microsoft operates two of the most valuable franchises in enterprise technology, which account for approximately 70% of the company’s overall profits: M365 and Azure,” he said.
He described Microsoft 365 as a dominant productivity platform, writing that it is “the dominant operating platform for knowledge work, with over 450 million workers using Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, and Teams on a daily basis.”
As two of the largest forces in equity markets — growing index ownership and increasing amounts of capital controlled by extremely short-term-oriented, leveraged, volatility-intolerant investors — converge, we have found occasional opportunities to acquire some of the most…
— Bill Ackman (@BillAckman) May 15, 2026
On the company’s cloud business, he said Azure is benefiting from long-term structural demand trends. “Azure is the world’s second-largest hyperscaler cloud platform and, like AWS in our Amazon investment, is a direct beneficiary of the multi-decade migration of enterprise IT workloads to the cloud, which is now further accelerated by surging demand for AI inference workloads,” Ackman wrote.
Ackman also highlighted Microsoft’s broader product ecosystem, including LinkedIn, Xbox and its search and advertising businesses, as part of what he described as a diversified portfolio of assets.
“We began building our position in MSFT in February following a meaningful share price decline after the company reported its fiscal Q2 2026 results,” he said, adding that the position was accumulated at “a valuation of 21 times forward earnings.”
He also referenced artificial intelligence investments at the company, including Copilot, stating: “We are encouraged to see Microsoft prioritizing its R&D efforts and investment in Copilot, its own AI agent embedded across M365, with direct involvement from CEO Satya Nadella.”
Ackman said he believes the market is underestimating Microsoft’s enterprise resilience and pricing power, while also pointing to its cloud infrastructure expansion plans as a key support for future growth.
Shares of Microsoft, which has not publicly commented on the investment, traded up 3% at $422 on Friday morning.
