Pershing Square has taken a new position in Microsoft, the size of which will be disclosed in a 13F filing later on Friday. Shares are down about 16% year to date.
Bill Ackman bought Microsoft. CEO of Pershing Square he said at X on Friday morning The fund said it has taken a new position in the software company after its recent share price decline, the size of which will be disclosed in a regulatory filing later in the day.
The rationale, Ackman said, was that the market had misjudged enterprise franchising over AI. Investors have undervalued Microsoft’s software “given its deeply embedded role within enterprises and its highly attractive price-value proposition,” he said, framing the position as more of a quality-component bet on the installed base than a directional call on Azure capex.
Timing is the essence of trading. Microsoft shares are down about 16% for the year and have traded at about $413 since the end of April when Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood used the company. 3rd fiscal quarter results bringing full-year capital spending to about $190 billion, well above analysts’ estimate of about $155 billion.
The results themselves were a hit. Azure grew 40%, with AI workloads reaching $37 billion and total revenue of $82.9 billion. The stock fell anyway on what is called a widely circulated buy-side note a $190 billion capital plan that changes the price of artificial intelligence.
Ackman directed the show earlier this year. Pershing Square announced a new stake in Meta in FebruaryThree weeks after the latter’s equity-based sale, Ackman described the position at the time as a “deeply discounted valuation.”
Microsoft’s entry follows the same mold: a megacap pulled down by an AI spending guide designed by Ackman as an opportunity to buy a high-quality franchise at a temporarily low price.
Funds with more than $100 million in cash are required to file Form 13F disclosures of their U.S.-listed positions within 45 days of the end of the quarter, making Friday a heavy day for hedge fund reading.
Pershing Square’s latest 13F covering the December quarter showed eleven positions and about $16 billion in disclosed U.S. holdings concentrated in Brookfield, Uber, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta. Microsoft did not appear. Today’s filing will show the firm is cutting any existing names or weighing it down with cash to finance the new one.
The trade also feeds into the broader AI-infrastructure debate. There are hyperscalers Allocated more than $650 billion in AI capital In 2026, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, and Apple in combined Q1 numbers, and the market is now weighing the question of when, or if, these costs will translate into operating profit.
Ackman, in fact, argues that Microsoft’s existing Office, Windows and Azure book of business are enough to clear the bar, separate from the AI option.
The deep integration of Microsoft’s OpenAI models into Copilot, Azure, and the developer stack has been the dominant narrative in the company’s pricing over the past three years (The TNW arc followed). The Capex bill is the cost of maintaining this leadership. Ackman’s bet is that the enterprise software business under him is getting less credit than it should.
Pershing Square did not disclose the size of the position or the average purchase price. The 13F filing is expected to be filed later Friday US time.
