Microsoft shares fall nearly 3% in pre-market as global outage hits Outlook, Teams and Copilot; what went wrong?

Microsoft shares came under pressure on Friday after a major global outage disrupted several of its flagship software and productivity services, including Outlook, Teams, and its artificial intelligence (AI) assistant Copilot, leaving businesses, government agencies, and individual users struggling to access essential tools for more than 12 hours.

Microsoft’s products are among the most widely used software among business, government, and educational institutions. The software giant has struggled to restore normal operations since the disruption began on Thursday, with its latest recovery measures failing to deliver a sustained improvement in service availability.