Microsoft snags hotly contested $10 billion defense contract, beating out Amazon on 25th October 2019. It was a great news for Microsoft. As a result Microsoft stock rose as much as 3% in extended trading after the announcement, and Amazon stock dipped less than 1%.
The achievement highlights the emergence of Microsoft’s Azure cloud as a challenger to AWS and represents the latest victory for Satya Nadella, who took over from Steve Ballmer as Microsoft chief in 2014. Microsoft has also won major cloud-infrastructure deals from companies like Walmart even as AWS has kept growing.
Key Notes from this contract:
- The JEDI contract is worth up to $10 billion over 10 years.
- IBM and Oracle are among the companies that also sought the contract but ended up getting ruled out.
- Amazon has been a repeated target for President Trump, who announced in July.