Microsoft ends tradition of naming competitors in regulatory filings

• Microsoft's latest annual report excludes the names of rivals, putting a stop to a practice that goes back at least to 1994.
• Amazon and Tesla both gave up the practice in the past five years.
• Microsoft shares climbed after the company issued quarterly results and guidance that came in better than expected.

Microsoft has abandoned a decades-long tradition of calling out the names of its rivals in regulatory documents.

When the 50-year-old technology company released its annual report Wednesday, the 101-page document contained zero references to longtime foes Apple and IBM. Nor did it mention privately held challengers such as Anthropic or Databricks.

Last year's Microsoft annual report officially designated over 25 companies as competitors. The names of Microsoft's enemies have appeared in its annual reports at least since 1994.

The omission means Microsoft is breaking from a common industry practice. Apple, Meta and Nvidia all namedrop the companies they go up against.

It's not universally followed, though. Amazon has not identified competitors in annual reports since 1999. Tesla last did it in 2020, and Alphabet halted after 2022.

Now, Microsoft just says it faces competition in a wide variety of markets, including productivity software, PC operating systems and cloud infrastructure.

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The more specific disclosures helped to show where companies stood with the biggest name in software. In 2024, Microsoft started referring to key partner OpenAI as a competitor, after the artificial intelligence startup introduced a web search feature.

A Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC that the company updated the competition portion of the annual report to address larger categories. The new format reflects the fast-moving nature of the markets in which the company operates, the spokesperson said.

That's not to say Microsoft executives have stopped tracking developments at other technology companies.

CEO Satya Nadella referred to Amazon on Microsoft's earnings call on Wednesday.

Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft's cloud and AI group, said at a conference in May that “there are some cloud providers, like AWS, that still haven't launched a GB200 offering.”

Nvidia's GB200 NVL72 systems include 72 interconnected graphics processing units.

Microsoft shares climbed Thursday, a day after the company issued quarterly results and guidance that came in better than expected. The stock move sent the company's market capitalization past the $4 trillion mark.