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Note № 002

Microsoft names agentic AI as a reason it may not be able to stop scraping

Microsoft's FY2026 10-K rewrites one sentence in Item 1A about protecting LinkedIn and other product content from bots. Last year the sentence gave one cause. This year it gives a list, and agentic AI is on it.

What this note rests onVerified
This year
MICROSOFT CORP · Form 10-K · FY ending 2026-06-30MSFT · CIK 0000789019 · 0001193125-26-323660 · filed 2026-07-29 · open on SEC.gov
Last year
MICROSOFT CORP · Form 10-K · FY ending 2025-06-30MSFT · CIK 0000789019 · 0000950170-25-100235 · filed 2025-07-30 · open on SEC.gov
Reworded

Limitations on our ability to prevent third parties from scraping or gathering information or content through use of bots or other measures and using it for their own benefit due to, among other things, changes in the law, interpretations of law, or increasing use of agentic AI, could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

Reworded in FY2026. The FY2025 wording is quoted below.

Filing text · FY2026 10-K · Item 1A

Removed

[removed] Changes in the law or interpretations of the law may weaken our ability to prevent third parties from scraping or gathering information or content through use of bots or other measures and using it for their own benefit which could adversely affect our business, financial condition, and results of operations.

The FY2025 wording of the passage reworded above.

Filing text · FY2025 10-K · Item 1A

What changed

"Changes in the law or interpretations of the law may weaken" became "Limitations on our ability … due to, among other things, changes in the law, interpretations of law, or increasing use of agentic AI". The legal cause is still there. It is now one item in a list, and a technology is named alongside it.

Microsoft is one of 250 companies whose 2026 annual report contains the phrase "agentic AI". In 2022, 2023 and 2024, no 10-K did. The arrival of agentic AI counts them.

Every change between these two filings is in the full comparison.

Check this yourself

It takes about two minutes and you do not need us for any of it.

  1. 01

    Open the FY2026 10-K on SEC.gov and search Item 1A for “increasing use of agentic AI”.

  2. 02

    Open the FY2025 10-K and search the same section for the same phrase. It is not there.

  3. 03

    Both sentences carry “prevent third parties from scraping or gathering information or content through use of bots”, if you want to find your place.

This note says what the filing says. It is not a view on Microsoft, or on the stock, and nothing here is investment advice. If a quote above does not match the filing, tell us. Corrections go in the changelog, not quietly into the page.

Quotes matched against the filing text after normalising quotes, dashes and spacing. How a report is made.

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