Microsoft | TechCrunch

Microsoft bets a carbon removal bake-off will help offset its skyrocketing AI emissions

Tim De Chant — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 17:23:57 +0000

Microsoft is buying 10,000 tons of carbon credits from Deep Sky, a direct air capture developer.

Musk’s amended lawsuit against OpenAI names Microsoft as defendant

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 15 Nov 2024 04:22:47 +0000

Elon Musk’s lawsuit against OpenAI accusing the company of abandoning its nonprofit mission was withdrawn in July, only to be revived in August. Now, in an amended complaint, the suit names new defendants, including Microsoft, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, and former OpenAI board member and Microsoft VP Dee Templeton. The amended filing also adds new […]

FTC reportedly begins investigating Microsoft’s cloud business practices

Kyle Wiggers — Thu, 14 Nov 2024 23:17:43 +0000

The FTC is reportedly readying an investigation into whether Microsoft used anti-competitive tactics to maintain a dominant position in the cloud market. According to Financial Times, the agency is looking into allegations that Microsoft imposed punitive licensing agreements to prevent customers from moving data off its platforms. Sources told FT that the FTC is also […]

Microsoft Outlook now lets you create personalized AI-powered themes

Aisha Malik — Thu, 07 Nov 2024 17:26:04 +0000

Microsoft announced on Thursday that Outlook is getting a new feature that will allow you to use generative AI to create themes based on your personal preferences. AI-powered themes are available to people who have a Copilot Pro consumer subscription and business accounts with Copilot enabled. They are available on iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, and […]

Microsoft and a16z set aside differences, join hands in plea against AI regulation

Devin Coldewey — Fri, 01 Nov 2024 22:48:13 +0000

Two of the biggest forces in two deeply intertwined tech ecosystems — large incumbents and startups — have taken a break from counting their money to jointly plead that the government desist from even pondering regulations that might affect their financial interests, or as they prefer to call them, innovation. “Our two companies might not […]

Google-backed Open Cloud Coalition launches to lobby European lawmakers

Paul Sawers — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 23:00:00 +0000

Europe has a new lobbying body, one with a self-stated mission to “improve competition, transparency and resilience” in the cloud computing sector. The Open Cloud Coalition (OCC) counts 10 members at launch, the most notable of which is Google, supported by international and local cloud providers Centerprise International, Civo, Gigas, ControlPlane, DTP Group, Prolinx, Pulsant, […]

Microsoft accuses Google of ‘shadow campaign’ to influence cloud regulation in Europe

Paul Sawers — Mon, 28 Oct 2024 20:30:37 +0000

The European cloud wars are heating up. Microsoft has accused its old foe Google of waging a clandestine war against the Azure cloud company, to curry favor with policymakers and antitrust authorities in Europe. In a blog post today, Microsoft deputy general counsel Rima Alaily preempted the imminent launch of a new lobby group called […]

Microsoft could end up with substantial equity in the restructured, for-profit OpenAI

Kyle Wiggers — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 16:07:54 +0000

How much equity in OpenAI will Microsoft get once the former becomes a for-profit company? That’s the multibillion-dollar question — one the two parties are racing to answer ahead of a two-year deadline. The Wall Street Journal reports that both Microsoft and OpenAI have hired investment banks to negotiate Microsoft’s equity — which could be […]

The surprising way OpenAI could get out of its pact with Microsoft

Connie Loizos — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 06:39:20 +0000

The New York Times on Thursday published a look at the “fraying” relationship between OpenAI and its investor, partner, and, increasingly, rival, Microsoft, reporting their five-year romance has cooled owing to financial pressure on OpenAI, the limited computing power Microsoft is providing OpenAI, and disagreements between the two about ground rules. Most fascinating perhaps is […]

Microsoft said it lost weeks of security logs for its customers’ cloud products

Zack Whittaker — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 19:06:12 +0000

Missing logs could make it more difficult to identify unauthorized access to the customers' networks during that two-week window.

Marc Benioff warns that AI, while useful, is overhyped and partly blames Microsoft

Julie Bort — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 18:23:33 +0000

One of the tech industry’s biggest hype men, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, is psyched about AI, but points out that it hasn't cured cancer.

OpenAI snatches up Microsoft generative AI research lead

Devin Coldewey — Tue, 15 Oct 2024 01:54:23 +0000

Microsoft has lost an AI expert and OpenAI gained one, after the former’s VP of generative AI research, Sebastien Bubeck, left for the latter. The Information first reported the move, and Reuters also confirmed the departure with Microsoft. We know Bubeck as one of the main authors of papers describing Microsoft’s Phi models, a series […]

Data center tech is exploding but adoption won’t be easy for startups

Rebecca Szkutak — Sun, 13 Oct 2024 15:00:00 +0000

The data center industry is expanding rapidly to keep up with the flywheel growth of AI. While these data centers are necessary AI infrastructure, they store an AI company’s compute, they are expensive to build, seemingly more so to run, and they are a huge energy suck. Startups are looking to make data centers more […]

Xbox will soon let players buy games directly in its Android app following Google antitrust ruling

Aisha Malik — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 14:38:12 +0000

Xbox president Sarah Bond announced that players will soon be able to play and purchase Xbox games directly from the Xbox app on Android. The announcement comes as a U.S. judge ordered Google to stop forcing developers to use Google Play’s billing system on Monday. The ruling forces Google to open up its app store to […]

LinkedIn says 10M people have signed up as freelancers on its Services Marketplace

Ingrid Lunden — Thu, 10 Oct 2024 16:40:07 +0000

More than 100,000 people have been laid off in the technology industry alone this year, and — either by circumstance or choice — at least some of them are not heading back into exclusively full-time work. LinkedIn launched a freelancer marketplace in 2021 to capture some of that activity. Now, at a time when other […]

Apple fixes bugs in macOS Sequoia that broke some cybersecurity tools

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 17:20:07 +0000

Apple said the new macOS release "improves compatibility with third-party security software," after the first operating systems release broke several cybersecurity tools.

Microsoft HoloLens 2 discontinued with no successor in sight

Brian Heater — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 15:39:38 +0000

Microsoft was ahead of the game in the world of enterprise AR.

Microsoft Copilot can now read your screen, think deeply, and speak aloud to you

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:00:58 +0000

Microsoft has given its Copilot assistant on Windows a makeover — and a voice. Copilot can now read your screen, speak aloud, and more.

Microsoft brings AI-powered overviews to Bing

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:00:56 +0000

Microsoft has broadly launched Bing Generative Search, its answer to Google's AI Overviews and other AI-powered search apps.

Microsoft starts paying publishers for content surfaced by Copilot

Kyle Wiggers — Tue, 01 Oct 2024 14:00:06 +0000

Microsoft is paying publishers for content as part of a new Copilot feature, Copilot Daily, that gives a spoken summary of current events.