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 AI gets a new London hub fronted by former Inflection and DeepMind scientist Jordan Hoffmann
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 and Quantinuum say they’ve ushered in the next era of quantum computing
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…
As Microsoft unbundles Teams, it might not have the impact on Slack you think
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.…
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…
Microsoft unbundles Office and Teams globally following years-long criticism
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…
Why AWS, Google and Oracle are backing the Valkey Redis fork
AWS and Google Cloud rarely back an open source fork together.
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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.
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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.…
LinkedIn targets users caught between TikTok and what used to be Twitter
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…
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,…
Here’s how Microsoft is providing a ‘good outcome’ for Inflection AI VCs, as Reid Hoffman promised
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…
TechCrunch Minute: All about Microsoft’s mega AI push after it hired Inflection AI’s co-founders
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…
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…
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’s new Adaptive accessibility accessories include an Atari-style joystick
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…
After raising $1.3B, Inflection is eaten alive by its biggest investor, Microsoft
In June 2023, Inflection announced it had raised $1.3 billion to build what it called “more personal AI.” The lead investor was Microsoft. Today, less than a year later, Microsoft…
Microsoft has hired Mustafa Suleyman and Karén Simonyan, co-founders of high-profile AI startup Inflection AI, and several of their colleagues in one of the strangest deals as the Satya Nadella-led cloud…
After AWS and Google, Microsoft says it’s removing Azure ‘egress’ data transfer fees — but with caveats
Microsoft has revealed that it, too, will allow business customers to transfer data out of its Azure cloud infrastructure with no “egress fees” attached, following hot on the heels of…
Russian spies keep hacking into Microsoft in ‘ongoing attack,’ company says
On Friday, Microsoft said Russian government hackers continue to break into its systems using information obtained during a hack last year. This time, the Russian hackers dubbed Midnight Blizzard have…
OpenAI says Musk only ever contributed $45M, wanted to merge with Tesla or take control
OpenAI, the most valuable AI startup, said Wednesday it intends to dismiss all claims made by Elon Musk in a recent lawsuit and suggested that the billionaire entrepreneur, who was…
It was only a few years ago — in 2021 — that Windows 11 gained official support for Android apps thanks to a Microsoft-maintained VM called the Windows Subsystem for…
Yesterday, Mistral AI, a Paris-based AI startup working on foundational models, announced a new large language model that could rival OpenAI’s GPT-4, a chat assistant and a distribution partnership with…
Mistral AI releases new model to rival GPT-4 and its own chat assistant
Paris-based AI startup Mistral AI is gradually building an alternative to OpenAI and Anthropic as its latest announcement shows. The company is launching a new flagship large language model called…
Walmart’s PhonePe launches India app store in challenge to Google
Microsoft, Amazon and Meta are among the top brands whose apps are listed on the Indian fintech PhonePe’s Indus Appstore, an Android app store launched Wednesday in challenge to Google’s…
US military notifies 20,000 of data breach after cloud email leak
The U.S. Department of Defense is notifying tens of thousands of individuals that their personal information was exposed in an email data spill last year. According to the breach notification…
Copilot, Microsoft’s family of AI-powered chatbots and assistants, is getting a few new upgrades timed with a flashy Super Bowl LVIII ad campaign. In a post on the official Microsoft…
Microsoft’s prescient bets and aggressive investments in AI have propelled the software giant to become the world’s most valuable company. Yet Satya Nadella, its typically reserved chief executive, couldn’t resist…
Cloud infrastructure saw its biggest revenue growth ever in Q4
For the last several quarters we’ve seen a lull in the expansion of the cloud infrastructure market, with lower growth numbers than we’ve been accustomed to seeing in the past.…
Microsoft, X throw their weight behind KOSA, the controversial kids online safety bill
On the eve of Wednesday’s Big Tech hearing (both Big Tech and a big hearing — five CEOs are testifying as we speak), Microsoft stepped up to back a controversial…
You know you’ve screwed up when you’ve simultaneously angered the White House, the TIME Person of the Year and pop culture’s most rabid fanbase. That’s what happened last week to…
