Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting Friday played out as if on a split screen: executives describing a future where AI cures diseases and secures networks, and shareholder proposals warning of algorithmic bias, political censorship, and complicity in geopolitical conflict.

One shareholder, William Flaig, founder and CEO of Ridgeline Research, quoted two authorities on the topic — George Orwell’s 1984 and Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot — in requesting a report on the risks of AI censorship of religious and political speech.

Flaig invoked Orwell’s dystopian vision of surveillance and thought control, citing the Ministry of Truth that “rewrites history and floods society with propaganda.” He then turned to Copilot, which responded to his query about an AI-driven future by noting that “the risk lies not in AI itself, but in how it’s deployed.”

In a Q&A session during the virtual meeting, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company is “putting the person and the human at the center” of its AI development, with technology that users “can delegate to, they can steer, they can control.”

Nadella said Microsoft has moved beyond abstract principles to “everyday engineering practice,” with safeguards for fairness, transparency, security, and privacy.

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s vice chair and president, said broader societal decisions, like what age kids should use AI in schools, won’t be made by tech companies. He cited ongoing debates about smartphones in schools nearly 20 years after the iPhone.

“I think quite rightly, people have learned from that experience,” Smith said, drawing a parallel to the rise of AI. “Let’s have these conversations now.”

Microsoft’s board recommended that shareholders vote against all six outside proposals, which covered issues including AI censorship, data privacy, human rights, and climate. Final vote tallies have yet to be released as of publication time, but Microsoft said shareholders turned down all six, based on early voting. 

While the shareholder proposals focused on AI risks, much of the executive commentary focused on the long-term business opportunity. 

Nadella described building a “planet-scale cloud and AI factory” and said Microsoft is taking a “full stack approach,” from infrastructure to AI agents to applications, to capitalize on what he called “a generational moment in technology.”

Microsoft CFO Amy Hood highlighted record results for fiscal year 2025 — more than $281 billion in revenue and $128 billion in operating income — and pointed to roughly $400 billion in committed contracts as validation of the company’s AI investments.

Hood also addressed pre-submitted shareholder questions about the company’s AI spending, pushing back on concerns about a potential bubble. 

“This is demand-driven spending,” she said, noting that margins are stronger at this stage of the AI transition than at a comparable point in Microsoft’s cloud buildout. “Every time we think we’re getting close to meeting demand, demand increases again.”

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On Tuesday, Microsoft and Nvidia announced plans to invest in Anthropic under a new partnership that includes a $30 billion commitment by the Claude maker to use Microsoft’s cloud services. Nvidia will commit up to $10 billion to Anthropic and Microsoft up to $5 billion, with both companies investing in Anthropic’s next funding round.

The deal brings together two companies that have backed OpenAI and connects them more closely to one of the ChatGPT maker’s main competitors. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a video that OpenAI “remains a critical partner,” while adding that the companies will increasingly be customers of each other.

“We will use Anthropic models, they will use our infrastructure, and we’ll go to market together,” Nadella said.

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The frenzy of AI deals and cloud partnerships reached another zenith Tuesday morning as Microsoft, Nvidia, and Anthropic announced a surprise alliance that includes a $5 billion investment by Microsoft in Anthropic — which, in turn, committed to spend at least $30 billion on Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform.

Nvidia, meanwhile, committed to invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic to ensure the Claude maker’s frontier models are optimized for its next-generation Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips.

The deal reflects growing moves by major AI players to collaborate across the industry in an effort to build and expand capacity and access to next-generation AI models. Microsoft recently renegotiated its partnership with OpenAI and has been increasingly partnering with others in the industry.

Anthropic has been closely tied to Amazon, which has committed to invest a total of $8 billion in the startup. Anthropic says in a post that Amazon remains its “primary cloud provider and training partner” for AI models. We’ve contacted Amazon for comment on the news.

OpenAI, for its part, recently announced a seven-year, $38 billion agreement with Amazon to expand its AI footprint to the Seattle tech giant’s cloud infrastructure.

Beyond the massive capital flows, the Microsoft-Nvidia-Anthropic partnership expands where enterprise customers can access Anthropic’s technology. According to the announcement, Microsoft customers will be able to use its Foundry platform to access Anthropic’s next-generation frontier models, identified as Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Opus 4.1, and Claude Haiku 4.5.

Microsoft also committed to continuing access for Claude across its Copilot family, ensuring the models remain available within GitHub Copilot, Microsoft 365 Copilot, and Copilot Studio.

The news comes as Microsoft holds its big Ignite conference in San Francisco.