Wedbush bullish on Microsoft AI strategy, sees possible accelerated M&A

Wedbush notes that Microsoft (MSFT) has held its much anticipated Ignite event where the company unveiled the next stage of its AI strategy to help organizations improve efficiencies and operating leverage with Copilot providing an end-to-end system for AI-driven business transformations. Microsoft has started focusing on building an agentic world that translates into real-time business outcomes with organizations able to securely build, deploy, and scale AI agents that support multiple models with built-in enterprise-grade security as more organizations look to leverage AI for mission-critical applications across user ecosystems with improved quality and faster responses, the firm says. Wedbush believes this is the next step on the AI strategic vision for Microsoft and would not be surprise to see an accelerated M&A strategy to help drive this next software stack layer of its AI platform. The firm reiterates an Outperform rating on the shares with a price target of $550.