Microsoft's Maia 300 Targets Multi-Gigawatt Azure Rollout by 2027

Microsoft's Maia 300 promises 40% more tokens per megawatt; analysts raise targets as shares sit 0.2% below their 52-week high.

Microsoft is betting that the path to profitable AI runs through silicon it designs itself. The company unveiled the Maia 300, its third-generation accelerator, with plans to operate Azure-Maia systems at multi-gigawatt scale starting in 2027. The chips are intended to serve as the primary platform for running AI services such as Copilot and Teams, a shift that would loosen Microsoft's dependence on outside chip suppliers and hand it tighter control over cloud margins.

At the heart of the pitch is efficiency. Microsoft says Maia 300 will deliver 40 percent more tokens per megawatt than leading graphics-processor-based systems. Inside fully populated racks holding 96 accelerators, token throughput is projected to hit seven times that of the predecessor Maia 200. The hardware leans on a chiplet architecture paired with high-bandwidth HBM4 memory to handle data-hungry queries.

The earlier Maia 200 is already running in production data centers across the United States, Europe and Australia, where it churns out up to 1.7 times more tokens per watt than conventional GPU infrastructure for communications and assistant workloads, according to the company. Additional services, GitHub Copilot among them, are slated to migrate to the platform before year-end. Microsoft will nonetheless keep buying Nvidia and AMD graphics processors for the resource-intensive job of model training.

Analysts Lift Targets as Stock Hovers Near Peak

Wall Street has greeted the vertical-integration push with higher price targets. Brad Zelnick of Deutsche Bank raised his target to $600 from $550 while reiterating a Buy rating. RBC analyst Rishi Jaluria stuck with Outperform and a $640 target, calling the Maia 300 launch a major step in Microsoft's vertical integration. Kirk Materne of Evercore ISI had already moved first, lifting his target to $635 from $528 last Wednesday and keeping his Outperform call.

The shares are trading at elevated levels. Microsoft closed Monday at EUR 485.15 after a 1.6 percent gain, then changed hands at EUR 485.20 on Tuesday. That leaves the stock just 0.2 percent below its 52-week high of EUR 486.00, touched Monday.

The hardware offensive is not the only item on the calendar. Last week the company rolled out software and device news, including Windows Hybrid Intelligence, security containers for AI agents and new Surface models such as the Surface Laptop Ultra. A digital event focused on OneDrive and the Copilot assistant follows on October 20.

Washington Friction and an Earnings Date

Not everything is smooth. According to media reports, the US government removed Microsoft last Thursday from a certification program tied to permanent residency applications. Vice President JD Vance accused the company of replacing laid-off American workers with foreign talent. Microsoft rejected the claim, noting that roughly 80 percent of its approximately 6,000 H-1B visa petitions in the prior fiscal year were filed simply to extend or adjust the status of existing employees.

Investors will get a clearer read on the company's finances in two weeks. Microsoft is scheduled to report its next quarterly results after the US market close on October 28.