Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella (Jason Redmond/Getty Images)

Jefferies raises its Microsoft price target to $600, saying Copilot adoption is growing

The firm surveyed enterprise decision-makers and found Copilot adoption is ramping faster than ChatGPT.

7/15/25 10:39AM

After surveying 40 large enterprise decision-makers about Microsoft, Jefferies has raised its price target on the tech giant to $600 from $550, citing faster adoption of M365 Copilot versus OpenAI’s ChatGPT. The firm found that 82% of respondents have adopted Copilot compared to 71% for ChatGPT. It also found that 57% are significantly or modestly increasing Azure cloud spend due to Copilot, compared with 36% in the last survey in September. Jefferies expects Copilot to drive more than $11 billion in revenue in the 2026 calendar year.

Last month, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives also raised his price target on Microsoft to $600, citing “incrementally bullish recent AI customer checks in the field with a massive adoption wave of Copilot and Azure monetization now on the doorstep for Microsoft.” Both Wedbush and Jefferies’ notes contradict a report last month by Bloomberg saying Microsoft’s sales team was having trouble convincing companies to use Copilot over ChatGPT, which many employees prefer.

Of course, the people making the decisions have different incentives than the employees at large, including the consideration of Microsoft’s long-standing and deep existing relationships with its client companies.

Microsoft is up 0.4% in early trading.

Rani Molla

Meta posts an earnings and revenue beat — and a huge capex bill

The social media giant reported earnings after the bell Wednesday.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg visits U.S. Capitol for Senate meetings

Rani Molla, Nate Becker

Alphabet jumps as Q1 earnings and revenue blow past expectations

The search giant also boosted its capex forecast for the year and said it expects 2027 capex to be “significantly” higher than 2026.

Rani Molla10h

SpaceX filings reportedly show no one can fire Elon Musk except Elon Musk

The only thing stopping Elon Musk from being chairman and CEO of SpaceX is Elon Musk, according to Reuters, which viewed an excerpt of the company’s IPO filing.

The document outlines a dual-class share structure giving Musk control via super-voting stock. The filing says he “can only be removed from our board or these positions by the vote of Class B holders” — shares he’ll control after the listing. It adds that if he keeps those shares, he could “continue to control the election and removal of a majority of our board.”

At a typical public company — even founder-led ones with dual-class structures — a CEO can be fired by the board of directors, which represents shareholders and can vote to remove them over issues such as corporate performance, strategy, or misconduct.

The unusual SpaceX setup means Musk is unlikely to face the kind of CEO succession pressure he’s dealt with at Tesla. Musk, of course, is not a typical CEO, and the value of his companies has long been closely tied to his presence.

To be sure, SpaceX’s confidential IPO filing isn’t in its final form yet — while the filing is still in the confidential phase, the company will be going back and forth with the SEC, which will review it and suggest or require changes.

Exclusive: Only Elon Musk can fire Elon Musk from SpaceX, filing shows

Rani Molla4/28/26

OpenAI’s models are officially coming to Amazon

Amazon is finally getting in on the hottest ticket in tech.

After Microsoft announced yesterday that it has agreed to give up its exclusive rights to sell OpenAI’s models, Amazon, as expected, will start offering them to customers — something Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman says users have been asking for “for a really long time.” Some models are available now in preview, and the most powerful GPT versions will show up “in the coming weeks.”

This is a big shift in the AI cloud wars. Microsoft’s early bet on OpenAI gave Azure an edge by locking up the most in-demand models. Now that exclusivity is gone, Amazon and other competitors can finally offer them too, closing a key gap and competing more directly for AI customers.

Amazon Set to Sell OpenAI Tech After Microsoft Cedes Exclusivity

Claire Yubin Oh4/28/26

Ship-tracking app surges as Iran war continues

As Middle East peace talks stretch on, with Tehran reportedly offering to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the US lifts its blockade and the war ends, the owner of shipping intelligence platform MarineTraffic revealed that the app has gained millions of new users since the conflict began.

MarineTraffic’s user count jumped to 8.5 million this April, up from 3.5 million a year ago, the cofounder of its parent company, Kpler, said in an interview with the Financial Times. Paid subscribers, often workers within companies and governments looking for more data on supply chains and commodities trading, rose 11,000 in the same period.

Kpler, which also owns shipping intelligence platform FleetMon, draws its data from a range of sources, including the Automatic Identification System, satellites, and more than 500 people on-site, like port terminal operators.

Per Appfigures data, MarineTraffic is estimated to have raked in almost $1 million across March and April in app revenue (through April 27), more than double the ~$346,500 from the same months last year. Across the full year, Kpler expects to earn between $300 million and $400 million in annual recurring revenues.