By Daniel Howley
Publication Date: 2026-01-27 15:46:00
Microsoft (MSFT) will report its fiscal second quarter earnings on Wednesday, and one number in particular will be on investors’ minds: remaining performance obligations (RPO).
The measurement, which refers to contracts Microsoft has with customers that haven’t been paid out yet, has become a major metric to help Wall Street get a better idea of overall AI demand.
In its prior quarter, Microsoft revealed that it had $392 billion in RPO, and according to Jefferies analyst Brent Thill, that will increase in Q2.
“[Fiscal Q2] RPO should show the largest sequential step-up ever, driven by inclusion of the $250 billion [OpenAI] commitment & Anthropic’s $30 billion Azure compute agreements, reinforcing unprecedented multi‑year demand visibility underpinning a strong durable growth outlook for Azure and [M365 Commercial],” Thill wrote in a note to investors.
Microsoft is seeing reaccelerating cloud revenue growth thanks to the AI explosion, which is boosting its…
