Microsoft earnings spark optimism for AI stocks, but crypto didn’t get the memo

Microsoft just reminded everyone why it sits at the center of the AI trade. The company posted Q4 2026 revenue of $90 billion, up 18% year-over-year, with net income climbing 31% to $35.8 billion. The market’s response was swift: shares jumped as much as 15.5% in premarket trading. The real headline inside those numbers was Azure. Microsoft’s cloud division grew 43% in the quarter, a figure that signals enterprises are not just experimenting with AI workloads — they’re committing to them at scale. What drove the move Microsoft’s management paired the strong results with a forward-looking commitment to spend roughly $175 billion on AI infrastructure in calendar 2026. The other story: a hedge fund fire sale Running parallel to Microsoft’s good news was a considerably less comfortable situation at Situational Awareness, an AI-focused hedge fund founded by Leopold Aschenbrenner, a former OpenAI researcher. The fund was forced to liquidate its AI equity positions after margin calls, with Citadel reportedly stepping in as the buyer. The timing is worth sitting with for a moment. A fund built specifically to bet on AI, run by someone with genuine insider knowledge of the technology’s traj...