Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT | MSFT Price Prediction) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) just posted the two most consequential AI earnings reports of the year. Microsoft closed fiscal 2026 with Azure surpassing $100 billion in annual revenue and Microsoft 365 Copilot exceeding 30 million paid seats.
NVIDIA followed with a quarter that felt closer to a coronation, delivering $81.6 billion in revenue, up 85% year over year. The question worth answering is which of these giants has the more credible path to doubling from here.
Azure Sells Software. Blackwell Sells Everything Else #
Microsoft is monetizing AI through contracts, seats, and consumption. Commercial remaining performance obligations reached $678 billion, up 84% year over year, which is a very large amount of pre-booked revenue that de-risks the next several years.
NVIDIA sells the underlying hardware, and the pricing power shows. Non-GAAP gross margin held at 75% even as Blackwell systems dominated the mix, and management guided Q2 revenue to roughly $91 billion.
Data Center did the heavy lifting, with networking revenue up 199% year over year, driven by InfiniBand and NVLink. Jensen Huang described the moment simply: “Agentic AI has arrived.”
Satya Nadella framed Microsoft’s position differently, telling investors the company is “advancing the frontier on the cost-to-outcome curve.” Both bets are working, but they compound in very different ways.
Math of Doubling From Here #
This is where the comparison narrows the case for NVIDIA bulls. At a market cap of roughly $5.27 trillion, doubling implies a valuation few companies in history have approached.
Microsoft, by contrast, sits at $3.6 trillion with a P/E near 27x and a forward P/E near 24x. NVIDIA trades at a trailing P/E of 34x, which is reasonable only if growth stays parabolic.
Lens | Microsoft | NVIDIA | | Revenue growth | 17.8% | 85.2% | | Net margin | 40.3% | 63% | | Core risk | Capex return | China, cyclicality |
NVIDIA carries the tougher risks. Guidance excludes any China data center compute revenue, and supply commitments have grown to $145 billion, which is a lot of forward exposure if hyperscaler orders wobble.
Why I Lean Toward Microsoft for the Double #
I think NVIDIA is the better business today, but Microsoft is the better setup to double from here. Doubling a $3.6 trillion company on contracted revenue and Copilot penetration is a more repeatable story than doubling a $5.3 trillion hardware supplier that already prices in near-flawless execution.
Microsoft’s $115.9 billion in FY26 capex is enormous, and free cash flow is under pressure as a result. But the money is buying an asset base that Azure and Copilot will monetize for a decade, and it flows to the power, cooling, and networking suppliers we profiled in a free report on the AI buildout beyond the chipmakers, here.
If you prefer variance, NVIDIA still fits. Its model base case is $270.51, with a bull case near $312.81, and Vera Rubin ramps up in the second half.
For the specific question of a 100% return, though, Microsoft looks like the company still building its monetization engine, while NVIDIA has already delivered much of the acceleration investors were pricing in.
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