Microsoft Is Set to Be a Winner as IT Budgets Will Grow This Much in 2026. -- Barrons.com

By Adam Clark

Microsoft stock has been in a rut for several months. But the software-and-cloud computing company should win out from increased IT spending this year, according to a KeyBanc survey.

A poll of resellers -- companies which buy IT products and bundle them with their own services -- found customer budgets are set to grow 5.3% in 2026, accelerating from 4.6% growth in 2025. That's good news for the sector and Microsoft in particular, with spending on both its cloud-computing unit Azure and its Copilot artificial-intelligence products expected to rise.

"30% of respondents expect customer spend on public cloud to grow faster, up 17 points vs. 3Q -- a tailwind for Azure that goes beyond GPUs [graphics-processing units]," wrote KeyBanc analyst Eric Heath and colleagues in a research note. "Additionally, multiple Copilot products are garnering attention as more respondents indicated Copilot piloting and production under way."

KeyBanc analysts have an Overweight rating and $630 target price on Microsoft stock. Shares of Microsoft were down 0.7% at $467.50 in premarket trading, set to add to an 8% loss over the past three months.

Market skepticism seems to be dragging on Microsoft and software stocks in general, as well as companies with close ties to ChatGPT-developer OpenAI. That is despite analysts at Goldman Sachs recently raising their price target on Microsoft to $655, arguing that investments in AI start-up Anthropic and its own in-house AI models have diversified the company's exposure beyond OpenAI.

One continuing question is how quickly users are adopting AI tools. Microsoft shares dropped last month when technology-focused news outlet The Information reported that it was easing sales quotas for enterprise AI products like Microsoft 365 Copilot. Microsoft subsequently told Barron's that aggregate sales quotas for AI products had not been lowered.

"There remains a steady increase in respondents citing customers are in the "experimenting/piloting" phase [with AI]. Those citing GenAI rollouts in production remain in the low-to -mid-single-digit range," wrote KeyBanc's Heath.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com

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January 14, 2026 07:43 ET (12:43 GMT)

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