Microsoft is cashing in on IPO of Adaptive Biotechnologies

In late 2017, Microsoft invested in an experimental health-care company called Adaptive Biotechnologies, hoping to put its advanced cloud technology to work in life sciences while also making money as a significant shareholder.

As of Thursday, Microsoft appears poised to do both.

Adaptive, which is developing what it calls an “immune medicine platform” to change how we treat various diseases, soared in its public market debut. The stock doubled during intra-day trading on Thursday, closing at $40.30 after the company sold shares Wednesday night at $20 a piece. The pop means the value of Microsoft’s $45 million investment at $10.67 a share has almost quadrupled.

As the world’s most valuable public company, with a market cap over $1 trillion, Microsoft has many ways to generate profits. Start-up investments represent one avenue, though the software maker has been far less active than many other large tech companies like Alphabet, which has multiple venture groups for early and late-stage deals, and Salesforce, which has been a big investor in cloud software and recently launched specific funds in in Canada, Japan and Australia.

With Adaptive, there’s much more at stake for Microsoft than just an investment in the biggest biotech IPO of 2019 so far. Microsoft’s Azure unit, which is second in the cloud infrastructure market behind Amazon Web Services, gets to test out its artificial intelligence tools in an industry that promises to be highly lucrative in the coming years as more emerging health-related companies turn to software in the cloud for heavy workloads. According to Orbis Research, the global immunology market will grow to $74.1 billion in 2022 from $57.7 billion in 2015.

Adaptive has agreed to spend a minimum of $12 million on Azure over seven years, according to its IPO prospectus, and Microsoft is the exclusive provider of cloud services during that period.

“We believe deeply in the potential for this…