Today, Microsoft announced quite a few new products and services as part of its Inspire 2023 partner event. However, one specific announcement may have caused the company"s stock price to shoot way up in trading today, and it ended at an all-time high stock price.
CNBC reports that the stock price shot up just after 11:30 am Eastern time, and was up at one point 5.8 percent higher. After the end of the trading day, the stock price came off those higher numbers, but still finished 3.98 percent higher, at 359.49.
The likely reason traders boosted Microsoft stock to an all-time high today was the announcement of the pricing for Microsoft 365 Copilot. The company said that when the generative AI assistant for its online productivity apps is made generally available, it will cost $30 per month per person for its commercial Microsoft 365 E3, E5, Business Standard and Business Premium customers.
While many people online felt that such a price is on the expensive side, it likely pleased Microsoft stock owners and traders. They might believe that many corporations that already use Microsoft 365 will spend that amount per user for its generative AI features.
Right now, Microsoft 365 Copilot is in an Early Access phase of development with a small number of companies currently using it. Microsoft has yet to reveal a specific time frame of when it will become generally available, although it is expected to officially launch before the end of 2023.
Besides the Microsoft 365 pricing, the company also revealed a number of other new and upcoming products and services. That included Bing Chat Enterprise, a version of its AI chatbot that"s been made more secure for businesses. It also revealed that Copilot features will soon become available for Microsoft Teams Phone and chat. In addition, it announced a partnership with Meta to offer its Llama 2 large language model for Windows PCs and Azure customers.