Pershing Square has taken a new position in Microsoft, with the size to be disclosed in a 13F filing later on Friday. The stock is down about 16% year to date.
Bill Ackman bought Microsoft. CEO of Pershing Square X said on Friday morning that the fund has taken a new position in the software company after its recent share price decline, with the size to be disclosed in a regulatory filing at a later date.
The reason given by Ackman was that the market unfairly favors business franchises over AI. Investors have underestimated Microsoft’s software ‘given its entrenched role across businesses and attractive price proposition’, he wrote, positioning it as a quality bet on the installed base rather than a directional call on Azure capex.
Time is the essence of commerce. Microsoft shares are down about 16% year to date and have traded near $413 since late April, when Chief Financial Officer Amy Hood used the company’s cash. Q3 financial results to raise full-year capital expenditure guidance to $190bn, above the $155bn analysts had penciled in.
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The results themselves are rhythmic. Azure grew by 40%, AI run rate reached $37bn, and total revenue cleared $82.9bn. The stock fell anyway, in what is called a widely circulated single note a $190bn capex plan that also called for AI.
Ackman has played this game before this year. Pershing Square revealed a new post on Meta in Februarythree weeks after his capex-driven sale, Ackman described the position at the time as a ‘significantly discounted valuation’.
Microsoft’s investment follows a similar pattern: a megacap dragged down by an AI investment guide, pitched by Ackman as an opportunity to buy a high-quality franchise at a limited price for a limited time.
Funds with more than $100m are required to file Form 13F disclosures for US-listed positions within 45 days of the end of the quarter, making Friday a tough day for hedge-fund reading.
Pershing Square’s last 13F, covering the December quarter, showed eleven positions and about $16bn in US exposures focused on Brookfield, Uber, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta. Microsoft did not appear. Today’s filing will show whether the company has adjusted any existing bonds to fund new ones or balance them with cash.
Trade is also within the broader AI infrastructure debate. Hyperscalers exist has committed more than $650bn in AI capex in 2026, in the combined Q1 numbers from Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Apple, and the market is now pricing in the question of when the money spent is converted cleanly into operating profit.
In fact, Ackman says that Microsoft’s existing Office, Windows and Azure business books are enough to clear the bar, apart from the choice of AI.
Microsoft’s deep integration of OpenAI models across Copilot, Azure and the developer stack has been a leading story in the company’s re-pricing over the past three years.TNW traced the arc). The capex bill is the cost of capturing that lead. Ackman’s bet is that the enterprise software business under him is being given less credit than it deserves.
Pershing Square did not disclose the size of the property or the average purchase price. The 13F filing is expected later on Friday US time.
