The release of Microsoft’s Maia 200 chip is a long-awaited milestone for the company in the AI chip race.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Microsoft’s Azure and cloud services revenues are growing rapidly.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
The stock is down over 2% to start 2026.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n
Here’s an AI stock that’ll crush the market in 2026, and no, it’s not Nvidia <\/strong>(NASDAQ: NVDA)<\/a>. Microsoft<\/strong> (NASDAQ: MSFT)<\/a> is going to have the best year among the AI leaders. Why is that? Because on Jan. 26, the software company revealed its long-awaited Maia 200 chip.<\/p>\n This is Microsoft’s second-generation in-house chip that’s used for artificial intelligence (AI) inference<\/a>. Inference is the “doing” stage of AI, where trained AI models move into solving real problems.<\/p>\n Where to invest $1,000 right now?<\/strong> Our analyst team just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks <\/strong>to buy right now, when you join Stock Advisor. See the stocks \u00bb<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n Microsoft’s Maia 200 is ready to compete<\/p>\n Microsoft lagged behind its competitors in designing its own AI chips. This release marks an important milestone in the AI race<\/a> between the tech industry’s giants. The Maia 200 chip is built on Taiwan Semiconductor<\/strong>‘s 3-nanometer process.<\/p>\n Image source: Getty Images.<\/p>\n Maia 200 will directly compete with Nvidia’s inference GPUs as well as Amazon<\/strong>‘s Trainium and Alphabet<\/strong>‘s Google TPU. Microsoft says Maia 200 has 30% better performance than its competitors for the same price. This bang-for-the-buck advantage is significant as price sensitivity grows in the sector. Microsoft’s AI team will be the first to use Maia 200, but wider availability is expected to roll out in the near future.<\/p>\n Microsoft’s deployment of Maia 200 reduces its reliance on third parties. As the company rolls out the chip to a wider audience, it will also generate new revenue, including its availability for rent for Azure cloud customers. Maia 200’s predecessor was not available to rent.<\/p>\n Microsoft’s stock is down a little over 2% to start 2026. The software company’s forward price-to-earnings (P\/E) ratio is currently under 30. Microsoft surpassed $3.5 trillion in market cap in 2025, and by that metric is the fourth-largest company in the world. Still, a successful launch of Maia 200 could mean serious growth for Microsoft as it sends a significant counterpunch to Nvidia’s dominance<\/a>.<\/p>\n Expect to see results in late 2026<\/p>\n I anticipate Maia 200’s impact to really pick up steam as we head into the latter part of 2026. Azure and Microsoft’s cloud businesses will continue to grow substantially throughout the year. Microsoft reported a 40% increase in Azure and other cloud services revenue in its first quarter fiscal year 2026 earnings report. <\/p>\n As Microsoft moves Maia 200 from in-house to general availability, I expect this chip to make a real mark in the AI chip race and help accelerate Microsoft’s growth in Azure and cloud services. Will it overtake Nvidia? That’s probably not likely, but it could do some serious damage and help Microsoft stay atop<\/a> the leaderboard.<\/p>\n You heard it here: Microsoft will be the AI stock of the year.<\/p>\n Should you buy stock in Microsoft right now?<\/p>\n Before you buy stock in Microsoft, consider this:<\/p>\n The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks<\/a><\/strong> for investors to buy now\u2026 and Microsoft wasn\u2019t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.<\/p>\n Consider when Netflix<\/strong> made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you\u2019d have $462,174<\/strong>!* Or when Nvidia<\/strong> made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you\u2019d have $1,143,099<\/strong>!*<\/p>\n Now, it\u2019s worth noting Stock Advisor\u2019s total average return is 946% \u2014 a market-crushing outperformance compared to 196% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors.<\/strong><\/p>\n See the 10 stocks \u00bb<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n *Stock Advisor returns as of January 28, 2026. <\/p>\n Catie Hogan<\/a> has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Key Points The release of Microsoft’s Maia 200 chip is a long-awaited milestone for the company in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13297,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[261],"tags":[291,289,290,18,19,17,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-307833","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-technology"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115972244962400379","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13297"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1769595908_955_.jpeg\"\/)
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