Elavon, a subsidiary of U.S. Bank and one of the world’s largest payment processors, has launched Elavon Live Payments as an embedded app within Microsoft 365. Available through the Microsoft Marketplace, the solution leverages the omni‐channel capabilities of the Elavon Payments Gateway (EPG) on Microsoft Azure to enable professionals to create and send invoices and collect payments directly in Outlook or Teams. According to Elavon’s Global Chief Product Officer, integrating payments workflows into familiar Microsoft 365 interfaces can reduce Days Sales Outstanding by five to fifteen days relative to industry benchmarks, addressing cash‐flow challenges in professional services.

Microsoft has declared a regular quarterly cash dividend of $0.91 per share, payable on March 12, 2026, to shareholders of record as of February 19, 2026. This marks the company’s 25th consecutive year of annual dividend increases. At the prevailing yield of 0.77%, the forward payout ratio stands at approximately 19.4%, indicating that less than one‐fifth of earnings will be returned to investors this quarter. Holders of 100 shares can expect to receive $91 in March, equating to $364 in annual income if the rate remains unchanged, while preserving substantial earnings for continued investment in cloud, AI infrastructure and product expansion.

Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin’s village board unanimously approved site plans for Microsoft to construct 15 additional data centers on two lots adjacent to its existing campus. The development encompasses nearly 9 million square feet of building area, three new electrical substations and a combined taxable value exceeding $13 billion. Local officials expect construction and operational jobs to persist for up to ten years. Water demand will remain capped at 8.4 million gallons annually under the agreement with the nearby city of Racine, ensuring no additional strain on regional utilities.

Microsoft has introduced its in-house AI inference accelerator, the Maia 200, engineered for large-scale token generation workloads in Azure. The company claims Maia 200 delivers three times the FP4 performance of competing cloud ASICs and 30% better performance-per-dollar than its previous-generation hardware fleet. Maia 200 will support the latest GPT models from OpenAI and is positioned to improve the economics of AI deployments. While Microsoft emphasizes efficiency gains, industry analysts note that Nvidia’s broader software ecosystem and diversified GPU platform remain a critical factor for many enterprise customers.