Microsoft stock fell 3% after internal AI sales targets were quietly cut following weak performance
2025-12-04 05:15
Microsoft shares fell by 3% on Wednesday in New York after new reporting from The Information revealed that the company quietly lowered sales expectations for its cloud-based AI marketplace. At the same time, a legal complaint filed in Ireland accused the company of helping Israel’s military scrub surveillance data from servers in Europe. It was the biggest single-day drop for Microsoft since November 18. The quota cuts happened inside Azure, where multiple divisions lowered sales targets for AI products after many salespeople missed their goals in the fiscal year that ended in June. One team had aimed for customers to increase spending on the Foundry marketplace by 50%. Less than 20% of the team hit that goal. In July, Microsoft lowered the target to 25% for the current year. Foundry is where businesses buy tools to build automated AI agents, separate from Microsoft’s more consumer-facing Copilot products. Microsoft says targets...
