Microsoft

Microsoft has benefited substantially from the rise of AI. Its partnership and close relationship with OpenAI has continued through 2024, as it looks to establish its Copilot chatbot as a go-to tool across its software and hardware offerings, even dedicating a button to it on future Windows device keyboards. TechCrunch covers those developments, and its other recent moves like unbundling Teams and Office and successfully defeating an antitrust challenge against its acquisition of Activision Blizzard.

Microsoft’s big focus at this year’s Build conference is generative AI. And to that end, the tech giant announced a series of updates to its platforms for building generative AI-powered…

Microsoft upgrades its AI app-building platforms

Microsoft wants to make its brand of generative AI more useful for teams — specifically teams across corporations and large enterprise organizations. This morning at its annual Build dev conference,…

Microsoft intros a Copilot for teams

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Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

Microsoft won’t be facing antitrust scrutiny in the U.K. over its recent investment into French AI startup Mistral AI.

Microsoft dodges UK antitrust scrutiny over its Mistral AI stake

The EU’s warning comes after Microsoft failed to respond to a legally binding request for information that focused on its generative AI tools.

EU warns Microsoft it could be fined billions over missing GenAI risk info

Microsoft will launch its custom Cobalt 100 chips to customers as a public preview at its Build conference next week, TechCrunch has learned. In an analyst briefing ahead of Build,…

Microsoft’s custom Cobalt chips will come to Azure next week

Microsoft will launch its own mobile game store in July, the company announced at the Bloomberg Technology Summit on Thursday. Xbox president Sarah Bond shared that the company plans to…

Microsoft is launching its mobile game store in July

Microsoft and OpenAI have announced a $2 million fund to combat the growing risks of AI and deepfakes being used to “deceive the voters and undermine democracy.” This year will…

Microsoft and OpenAI launch $2M fund to counter election deepfakes

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Cloud revenue accelerates 21% to $76 billion for the latest earnings cycle

The numbers are in, and the cloud infrastructure market grew at a brisk pace this quarter driven by increasing interest in generative AI.

Cloud revenue accelerates 21% to $76 billion for the latest earnings cycle

Microsoft has reaffirmed its ban on U.S. police departments from using generative AI for facial recognition through Azure OpenAI Service, the company’s fully managed, enterprise-focused wrapper around OpenAI tech. Language…

Microsoft bans US police departments from using enterprise AI tool for facial recognition

Microsoft, it seems, is hedging its bets when it comes to general-purpose robotics AI. At the end of February, the Windows maker spearheaded a massive $675 million Series B in…

Microsoft taps Sanctuary AI for general-purpose robot research

The UK is launching initial enquiries into Amazon and Microsoft over partnerships with AI companies Mistral, Anthropic, and Inflection.

UK probes Amazon and Microsoft over AI partnerships with Mistral, Anthropic and Inflection

CISA said the latest theft of government email — blamed on Russian government hackers — presents “a grave and unacceptable risk” to U.S. federal agencies.

US says Russian hackers stole federal government emails during Microsoft cyberattack

Can AI eat the jobs of the developers who are busy building AI models? The short answer is no, but the longer answer is not yet settled.

TechCrunch Minute: Google’s Gemini Code Assist wants to use AI to help developers

The tech giant secured a cloud storage server that was inadvertently spilling Microsoft internal data and credentials to the open internet.

Microsoft employees exposed internal passwords in security lapse

The tech world is incredibly focused on AI and its applications today, but artificial intelligence is hardly the only place where progress is being made. If you want to get…

TechCrunch Minute: Quantum computing’s next era could be led by Microsoft and Quantinuum

Microsoft has announced a new London hub for its recently unveiled consumer AI division. It will be fronted by Jordan Hoffmann, an AI scientist and engineer Microsoft recently picked up from…

Microsoft AI gets a new London hub fronted by former Inflection and DeepMind scientist Jordan Hoffmann

Microsoft and Quantinuum today announced a major breakthrough in quantum error correction. Using Quantinuum’s ion-trap hardware and Microsoft’s new qubit-virtualization system, the team was able to run more than 14,000…

Microsoft and Quantinuum say they’ve ushered in the next era of quantum computing

One of the primary reasons that Slack joined forces with Salesforce in 2021 in a $28 billion deal was to give the communications company the clout to compete with Microsoft.…

As Microsoft unbundles Teams, it might not have the impact on Slack you think

The current AI wave is a never-ending barrage of news items. To understand what I mean, ask yourself how long you spent considering the fact that Amazon put another $2.75…

TechCrunch Minute: Amazon bets $4B on Anthropic’s success

Microsoft has introduced new versions of Microsoft 365 and Office 365 subscription services that exclude its business collaboration chat offering Teams following scrutiny from the European Union regulator and complaints…

Microsoft unbundles Office and Teams globally following years-long criticism

AWS and Google Cloud rarely back an open source fork together.

Why AWS, Google and Oracle are backing the Valkey Redis fork

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The market is forcing cloud vendors to relax data egress fees

As a number of factors come into play, like the reality of a multi-cloud world and a stricter regulatory environment, companies are beginning to see the error in their ways.

The market is forcing cloud vendors to relax data egress fees

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Apple dismisses Microsoft monopoly comparisons

A week after finding itself at the business end of a landmark lawsuit from the United States Department of Justice, Apple is staunchly denying any parallels between itself and Microsoft in the 1990s. It’s a comparison into which the U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland leaned heavily in last week’s filing.…

Apple dismisses Microsoft monopoly comparisons

Two weeks ago, TechCrunch broke the news that LinkedIn was getting into games, helping users “deepen relationships” through puzzle-based interactions. And on Wednesday, TechCrunch reported that the Microsoft-owned social network…

LinkedIn targets users caught between TikTok and what used to be Twitter

Welcome to Startups Weekly — your weekly recap of everything you can’t miss from the world of startups. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Friday. Helloooo,…

Startups Weekly: What goes up must come down

Exactly how much Microsoft is paying all the investors of Inflection AI as part its oddly structured deal to abscond with the co-founders, much of the staff and the rights…

Here’s how Microsoft is providing a ‘good outcome’ for Inflection AI VCs, as Reid Hoffman promised

Microsoft’s latest gambit to snag much of the human talent from Inflection AI is causing waves this week. Redmond has previously invested in the company, but is now absorbing much…

TechCrunch Minute: All about Microsoft’s mega AI push after it hired Inflection AI’s co-founders

We’re still a month or so out from Build, but Microsoft is doing a bit of a trial run this week in the form of an online-only event. What’s been…

Copilot gets its own key on Microsoft’s new Surface devices

Microsoft announced two new Surface devices and a slew of new accessories at a virtual event today, but the first part of the presentation focused squarely on how its AI…

Microsoft really wants to talk about Copilot

Microsoft has long garnered plaudits for its focus on accessibility. It’s a large segment of the population that is too often disregarded as an afterthought when it comes to product…

Microsoft’s new Adaptive accessibility accessories include an Atari-style joystick