Microsoft Faces AI Growth Pressure as Stock Plummets
Written by Emily J. Thompson, Senior Investment Analyst
Updated: Mar 31 2026
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Should l Buy CRM?
Source: CNBC
- Stock Plunge: Microsoft experienced a 23% drop in stock price during Q1, marking its worst quarterly performance since the 2008 financial crisis, significantly outpacing the Nasdaq's 7% decline, indicating investor concerns over its AI growth prospects that could impact future financing capabilities.
- AI Assistant Challenges: Microsoft's Copilot AI assistant has seen low user adoption, with only 3% of commercial Office customers holding licenses, forcing the company to allocate Azure cloud resources for improvements to maintain market share amid fierce competition.
- Executive Shake-up: Microsoft reassigned Copilot development head Mustafa Suleyman and appointed former Snap executive Jacob Andreou to lead the Copilot experience for consumers and commercial clients, raising market concerns about the company's strategic direction and potentially affecting team morale.
- Cloud Business Growth: Despite challenges, Microsoft's Azure cloud service achieved a 39% revenue growth in the December quarter, with commercial remaining performance obligations exceeding $625 billion, reflecting strong demand in the cloud infrastructure market that may support the company's future.
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Analyst Views on CRM
Wall Street analysts forecast CRM stock price to rise
39 Analyst Rating
29 Buy
9 Hold
1 Sell
Moderate Buy
Current: 182.960
Low
223.00
Averages
326.40
High
405.00
Current: 182.960
Low
223.00
Averages
326.40
High
405.00
About CRM
Salesforce, Inc. is a customer relationship management (CRM) technology company. Its artificial intelligence (AI) powered Agentforce 360 Platform offers sales, service, marketing, commerce, collaboration, data management, integration, analytics, and information technology (IT) service solutions. It enables customers to build and deploy digital labor for employees and customers, leveraging autonomous AI agents across business functions. Its service offerings include Agentforce Sales, Agentforce Service, Agentforce 360 Platform, Slack and Others. The Agentforce Sales provides sales capabilities and tools built for organizations across prospecting, sales engagement, team collaboration, sales analytics and AI, sales programs, sales performance, partner management, and revenue and orders. The Agentforce Service provides field service solutions that enable companies to connect service agents, dispatchers and mobile employees through platform to schedule, dispatch and manage jobs.
About the author

Emily J. Thompson
Emily J. Thompson, a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) with 12 years in investment research, graduated with honors from the Wharton School. Specializing in industrial and technology stocks, she provides in-depth analysis for Intellectia’s earnings and market brief reports.
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