Microsoft at Record High on Controversial Pentagon Contract
- Amazon may contest deal, some Microsoft workers already upset
- Microsoft win seemed unlikely as little as a year ago
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Microsoft Corp. shares rose to an intraday record after the company scored a major victory in securing a milestone, $10 billion Pentagon contract for cloud computing services. But the contract -- unthinkable for Microsoft even a year ago -- will likely come at a cost, legal and internal.
Amazon.com Inc., the market leader in cloud services, is considering a challenge to the award of the contract to Microsoft’s much smaller Azure business, citing President Donald Trump’s interference in the bidding process, according to a person familiar with the matter. Amazon had been widely considered the front-runner because of its superior size and previous cloud contract with the Central Intelligence Agency.