Microsoft is the world’s second-largest company by market capitalization, with an outsized presence in multiple sectors, including cloud computing, gaming, productivity software, and, lately, artificial intelligence.

Microsoft’s broad array of products and services, as well as the recent stock price increase, begs the question of how high MSFT could reach in the future. According to different growth models, Microsoft stock is forecasted to surpass $1,000 by 2040 and potentially reach five digits by 2050.

In this article, we are going to examine Microsoft stock forecasts for the medium and long term, accounting for the historical growth of important market indices and MSFT’s own historical performance. 

But first, here’s an overview of Microsoft stock’s price growth under various relevant growth scenarios.

  2024 2025 2030 2040 2050 MSFT stock forecast (Microsoft historical 10.7% ROI - last 25 yrs) $322 $357 $656 $1,813 $5,012 MSFT stock forecast (S&P 500 historical 11.8% ROI - last 66 yrs) $325 $364 $710 $2,166 $6,610 MSFT stock forecast (QTEC historical 17.1% ROI - last 10 yrs) $340 $399 $1,028 $4,987 $24,182

*The values in the table were calculated using MSFT’s price of $291 (as of April 7th). **S&P 500 has averaged 11.8% annualized returns over the past 66 years, QTEC 17.1% over the last 10 years, and MSFT 10.7% over the last 25 years.

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Microsoft stock price history

When the company first started trading in 1986, Microsoft (MSFT) stock price was about 10 cents per share (accounting for several stock splits over the years). Now, more than 35 years later, MSFT is trading at $291, over +290,900% above its original price. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s market cap sits at $2.17 trillion.

Microsoft stock price is up more than 1,070% since 2003.

Interestingly, MSFT price first reached $50 in 2000 but it would take more than 15 years before the stock revisited that price point in 2016. After that, Microsoft stock became a hot commodity, and the price exploded, reaching an all-time high of $348 in December 2020. 

At the time of writing, Microsoft accounts for 6.2% of the entire weight of the S&P 500, an index measuring the value of the 500 largest US companies trading on the stock market. For context, the combined value of companies indexed by the S&P 500 is $33.1 trillion.

Microsoft stock forecast 2023-2024

According to our Microsoft stock price prediction algorithm, MSFT’s price will face significant bearish action in the next 12 months. The price is projected to drop to $203 in the next six months and proceed to slide even further into the red zone, bottoming out at $149 next April.

The reason for the bearish near-term prediction is primarily two-fold – for starters, MSFT could be considered overvalued, as the stock is up more than 220% in the past five years. Secondly, a recession in 2023 and Fed’s proclamation that there will be no interest rate cuts this year are significant bearish factors as well.

Microsoft stock forecast 2025-2030

Microsoft stock price could hit $450 in 2025 and reach the quadruple-digit territory in 2030, increasing by over +350% and hitting $1,338.

Our Microsoft stock forecasts for 2025 trough 2030 are based on the average yearly growth of Microsoft stock in the last 10 years. While this kind of analysis does have its drawbacks, it still provides valuable insight into how the stock might act in the future, particularly if the trends that have been present over the last 10 years persist going forward.

Microsoft stock forecast for 2040

Microsoft stock’s price increased from roughly $27 at the start of 1999 to $291 more than two decades later – that means that MSFT’s annualized return over the trailing 25-year period has been 10.7%. 

Going by its historical growth to calculate long-term profits, Microsoft's stock price could increase to $1,813 by 2040, gaining 529%.

Interestingly, Microsoft’s average yearly return of 10.7% comes very close to the long-term average of the S&P 500 Index, which has on average gained +11.8% every year since 1957.

Although the S&P 500 can be a helpful gauge of a large-cap company's performance over a lengthy period, it evaluates businesses across various industries, ranging from finance to healthcare. Hence, it may not be the most appropriate indicator for forecasting the expansion of a technology company.

Given that Microsoft primarily operates in the tech industry, it is more fitting to rely on a tech-focused index fund like the NASDAQ-100-Technology Sector Index Fund (QTEC) to anticipate the future growth of one of the largest technology firms.

Over the last decade, QTEC has been growing at a 17.1% yearly expansion rate. If we use QTEC’s historical growth to project Microsft’s future growth, the price of MSFT would increase by 1,614% to $4,987 in 2040. 

Microsoft stock forecast for 2050

Using Microsoft’s historical stock price performance as the basis for the long-term MSFT stock price prediction, Microsoft shares could reach $5,012 and gain 1,622% by 2050.

Accounting for such a stock price, the market cap of Microsoft would grow beyond $34 trillion, which is over 17 times higher than it is today. 

While this seems extremely unlikely at first glance, there are indications that the global economy could expand sufficiently to support such market capitalizations in the future. For context, the global gross domestic product (GDP) grew from 12 trillion in 1985 to $101 trillion in 2022, a 742% increase in 27 years. If that same GDP growth were to persist in the next 27 years, the global GDP would reach $850 trillion.

The bottom line: AI could help MSFT reach new heights in the coming decades

Stock price forecasts for MSFT are notably bullish – there are several credible growth scenarios that put the price target for MSFT into quadruple digits. Given Microsoft’s encouraging business results in the past couple of years and its massive investment in AI (that are already paying off with the success of OpenAI’s ChatGPT), we can easily see why the company’s stock surpassing $1,000 is not out of the question.

For more long-term stock price analyses, you can check how much higher Tesla, Amazon, and Apple could reach by 2040 and 2050.

If you are instead interested in cryptocurrency forecasts, feel free to check our long-term prediction for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Cardano, and Solana