Microsoft | TechCrunch

Database startup Neon nabs a Microsoft investment

Kyle Wiggers — Wed, 07 Aug 2024 13:00:00 +0000

In a sign that big tech companies are ready and willing to shell out cash for database tech, Neon, a startup building an open source alternative to AWS Aurora Postgres, on Wednesday announced that Microsoft’s venture arm M12 led a $25 million strategic investment in its business. The capital will go toward R&D, Neon co-founder […]

Zuckerberg and Jensen show off their friendship, while an AI necklace covets yours

Cody Corrall — Sat, 03 Aug 2024 20:15:00 +0000

A fireside chat between Jensen Huang and Mark Zuckerberg at SIGGRAPH 2024 took some unexpected turns. What started as a conversation about the capabilities of Nvidia GPUs and Zuckerberg’s vision of an AI chatbot future quickly became a more casual affair — including a swap of custom-made jackets, a rare F-bomb from the Meta CEO, […]

Microsoft now lists OpenAI as a competitor in AI and search

Maxwell Zeff — Thu, 01 Aug 2024 17:55:17 +0000

Microsoft has a long and tangled history with OpenAI, having invested a reported $13 billion in the ChatGPT maker as part of a long-term partnership. As part of the deal, Microsoft runs OpenAI’s models across its enterprise and consumer products and is OpenAI’s exclusive cloud provider. However, the tech giant called the startup a “competitor” […]

TechCrunch Minute: Microsoft brings more generative AI to Bing

Anthony Ha — Fri, 26 Jul 2024 16:00:00 +0000

Bing is the latest search engine to introduce generative AI into its results, with Microsoft announcing that it’s making Bing generative search available to a small percentage of users. The goal is to give those users the answers they want right in their search results, potentially synthesizing information that they’d otherwise have to click through […]

Backed by Microsoft, AWS and Meta, the Overture Maps Foundation launches its first open map datasets

Paul Sawers — Wed, 24 Jul 2024 12:00:00 +0000

The Overture Maps Foundation is today releasing data sets for 2.3B building "footprints" globally, 54M notable places of interest, a visual overlay of "boundaries," and land and water features such as physical infrastructure.

Bethesda Game Studios employees form a ‘wall-to-wall’ union

Anthony Ha — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 20:32:54 +0000

Employees at Bethesda Game Studios — the Microsoft-owned game developer that produces the Elder Scrolls and Fallout franchises — are joining the Communications Workers of America union. Quality assurance testers at Bethesda’s parent organization ZeniMax unionized last year, becoming Microsoft’s first official union in the United States. In its announcement, the CWA calls Bethesda’s new […]

Microsoft says 8.5M Windows devices were affected by CrowdStrike outage

Anthony Ha — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 17:01:19 +0000

Around 8.5 million devices — less than 1 percent of Windows machines globally — were affected by the recent CrowdStrike outage, according to a Microsoft blog post by David Weston, the company’s vice president of enterprise and OS security. These are the first real numbers released by either Microsoft or CrowdStrike around the scale of […]

Faulty CrowdStrike update causes major global IT outage, taking out banks, airlines and businesses globally

Manish Singh — Sat, 20 Jul 2024 00:01:02 +0000

Security giant CrowdStrike said the outage was not caused by a cyberattack, as businesses anticipate widespread disruption.

Microsoft’s AI-powered, Canva-like Designer app lands on iOS and Android

Aisha Malik — Wed, 17 Jul 2024 16:04:45 +0000

The Designer app features "prompt templates" that are designed to help jumpstart the creative process.

Microsoft faces UK antitrust probe after hiring Inflection AI founders and employees

Paul Sawers — Tue, 16 Jul 2024 13:40:51 +0000

U.K. authorities have until early September to decide whether the hiring is tantamount to a merger.

There’s always something happening to OpenAI’s board

Kirsten Korosec, Rebecca Szkutak, Rebecca Bellan — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 14:05:00 +0000

Welcome back to another recap of Equity, TechCrunch’s flagship podcast about the business of startups. This episode is packed with deals, antitrust musings, AI and more. To kick things off, Kirsten walked us through a recent court decision that provided a bit of relief for Elon Musk. Earlier this week, one of the many lawsuits […]

Microsoft emails that warned customers of Russian hacks criticized for looking like spam and phishing

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 15:52:28 +0000

Cybersecurity experts are criticizing Microsoft for data breach notification emails that are confusing customers.

Microsoft settles with European cloud trade body over antitrust complaints

Paul Sawers — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 15:39:33 +0000

The core issue relates to a 2019 licensing change whereby Microsoft made it more expensive to run Microsoft’s enterprise software on rival cloud services.

As Microsoft leaves its observer seat, OpenAI says it won’t have any more observers

Ivan Mehta — Wed, 10 Jul 2024 07:00:00 +0000

This likely rules out reports of Apple gaining an observer seat.

Here are the hottest product announcements from Apple, Google, Microsoft and others so far in 2024

Christine Hall — Fri, 28 Jun 2024 13:00:00 +0000

We’ve poked through the many product announcements made by the biggest tech companies and product trade shows of the year, so far, and compiled them into this list.

Microsoft’s Mustafa Suleyman says he loves Sam Altman, believes he’s sincere about AI safety

Julie Bort — Tue, 25 Jun 2024 23:49:58 +0000

Microsoft's AI CEO has a cozy relationship with the man who used to be his rival, he said on Tuesday.

Semperis, a specialist in Active Directory security now worth more than $1B, raises $125M

Ingrid Lunden — Thu, 20 Jun 2024 12:33:06 +0000

Active Directory, the Microsoft directory service for connecting users with network resources, is used by more than 90% of all Fortune 1000 companies and many more besides. So it’s no surprise that it’s a giant target for malicious hackers. That also means a lot of attention for the security companies that are building tools to […]

Security bug allows anyone to spoof Microsoft employee emails

Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai — Tue, 18 Jun 2024 17:46:52 +0000

A researcher has found a bug that allows anyone to impersonate Microsoft corporate email accounts, making phishing attempts look credible and more likely to trick their targets. As of this writing, the bug has not been patched. To demonstrate the bug, the researcher sent an email to TechCrunch that looked like it was sent from […]

FTC Chair Lina Khan on startups, scaling, and ”innovations in potential lawbreaking”

Connie Loizos — Sat, 15 Jun 2024 07:17:00 +0000

FTC Chair Lina Khan was the youngest person appointed to her position when she assumed the job in 2021. But once her term ends in September — after which she’ll stay until a successor is named — her age might be the last thing that people remember about her reign. It’s more likely that Khan’s […]

Enveda raises $55M to combine ancient remedies with AI for drug discovery

Marina Temkin — Fri, 14 Jun 2024 10:00:00 +0000

For centuries, people chewed willow tree bark to relieve pain, but scientists at chemical firm Bayer didn’t isolate its active ingredient until the 1800s and eventually patented its modified version as Aspirin. Aspirin is just one example of a medicine derived from natural sources. In fact, the World Health Organization estimates that around 40% of […]