Gates' foundation sold all of its Microsoft shares. Bill Ackman is loading up on the stock. What is Wall Street missing?

The pursuing morning, Ackman explained helium utilized Pershing's Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) holdings to wage for it. "To beryllium clear, our merchantability of $GOOG was not a stake against the company," helium wrote connected X. "We are precise bullish agelong word connected Alphabet. But astatine existent valuations and successful airy of our finite superior base, we utilized $GOOG arsenic a root of funds for $MSFT" (4).

So wherefore is Gates selling?

The 7.7 million-share merchantability is the last tranche of a multi-year sale. The Trust held astir 28.5 cardinal Microsoft shares astatine the extremity of Q1 2025, trimmed to 7.7 cardinal by year-end, and zeroed retired this quarter.

Gates announced successful May 2025 that the instauration volition sunset operations successful 2045 and walk astir $200 cardinal connected charitable enactment implicit the adjacent 20 years (5). A instauration winding down its endowment doesn't person a prime but to merchantability — it has to money the giveaway.

Why is Ackman bullish connected Microsoft?

Pershing started stockpiling Microsoft successful February, close aft the company's fiscal Q2 2026 net sent the banal tumbling (2). It kept buying done a agelong wherever Microsoft was down sharply connected the twelvemonth and good disconnected its July 2025 grounds high.

Two worries had spooked the market:

First, Copilot adoption. Microsoft has converted lone astir 15 cardinal of its 450 cardinal paid Microsoft 365 commercialized seats into paying Copilot users. Independent probe showed Copilot's marketplace stock fell from 18.8% successful July 2025 to 11.5% by January 2026. That information prompted CEO Satya Nadella to reorganize the AI part successful March and sideline the AI enforcement helium paid $650 cardinal to recruit.