The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust - now called the Gates Foundation Trust after his ex-wife resigned from the organization - long maintained Microsoft as its largest holding , a legacy of Gates' ongoing stock gifts. One year ago, the holdings were valued at nearly $14 billion and represented one-third of the total. Yet in its third quarter 13F-HR filing, the Trust revealed it sold approximately 17 million shares, slashing its Microsoft position by nearly 65%.
In August, reports emerged that Microsoft had paused development on Contraband, a co-op smuggler game from Just Cause developer Avalanche. At the time, some sources noted that Microsoft put a "hold" on production rather than a full cancellation. But now, Contraband's fate appears to be sealed as mass layoffs at Avalanche have resulted in the closure of its Liverpool studio.
"That cartoon is a great example of someone else defining what became the cultural narrative more so than reality," Nadella told Stripe cofounder John Collison.
In the race to build powerful artificial intelligence, has had its hands tied behind it back for years. Now, the software giant is free to compete, according to top executive Mustafa Suleyman. Suleyman recently unveiled a superintelligence team at Microsoft and he spoke with Business Insider about how this came about and the company's future plans. What's clear from the interview is that Microsoft will aggressively pursue artificial general intelligence, technology capable of outperforming humans in a wide variety of tasks.
Pundits use the term to describe systems that appear to "think" independently of what humans program them to do, an ability that some previously described as "artificial general intelligence," or AGI. Suleyman announced he's heading up a new AI Superintelligence Team at Microsoft in a blog post Thursday. The key difference in Microsoft's vision, Suleyman said, is the vision of a humanist superintelligence, or HSI, that trades blind AI ambition for carefully planned limitations to make sure AI helps rather than harms us.
This announcement comes just hours after Microsoft announced a $9.7 billion deal for AI cloud capacity with IREN, an Australian data center business. Earlier today, OpenAI announced that it had struck a $38 billion cloud computing deal with Amazon to buy cloud services over the next seven years. The AI company also allegedly inked a $300 billion deal with Oracle for cloud compute in September too.
Microsoft has entered into a $9.7 billion cloud services contract with artificial intelligence cloud service provider IREN that will give it access to some of Nvidia's chips. Microsoft spent nearly $35 billion in the July-September quarter on capital expenditures to support AI and cloud demand, nearly half of that on computer chips and much of the rest related to data center real estate.
Writing about Xbox's overall business plan following the news that Halo will soon be coming to PlayStation consoles, The New York Times delivered confirmation of the rumored ad-supported Xbox Cloud Gaming tier. "A Microsoft official confirmed that the company was also conducting internal tests for free ad-supported cloud access to some games through a program separate from Game Pass," the New York Times article reads.
Shares of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) gained 2.66% over the past five trading sessions after losing 0.99% the five prior. That brings MSFT's year-to-date gain to nearly 25%, including a more than 45% gain since its year -to-date low on April 8. The company's reported strong Q2 earnings on July 30. The Magnificent Seven mainstay reported EPS of $3.65 versus analysts' expectations of $3.35, while quarterly revenue came in at $76.44 billion.
Shares of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) lost 0.99% over the past five trading sessions after gaining 1.34% the five prior. That brings MSFT's year-to-date gain to 23.03%, including a more than 45% gain since its year -to-date low on April 8. The company's reported strong Q2 earnings on July 30. The Magnificent Seven mainstay reported EPS of $3.65 versus analysts' expectations of $3.35, while quarterly revenue came in at $76.44 billion.
The case in the UK's Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) centers on the cost - sometimes as much as four times as high - of running Windows Server on Google, AWS, or Alibaba clouds. Filed in December 2024, the case is being spearheaded by digital markets regulation expert Dr Maria Luisa Stasi. It was given added impetus by the Competition and Markets Authority's (CMA) final findings in July that Microsoft's licensing policies disadvantaged customers using its three main rivals.
At the time the company's woes seemed intractable. How could it claw its way back in a world in which it lost out on the internet, social media, and mobile computing? Somehow, Nadella managed to do it. He ended Microsoft's ill-advised foray into building a mobile Windows OS, ended the corporate infighting and sniping, and recognized that Windows was no longer the company's future. Instead, he bet big on cloud computing - and the bet paid off.
Microsoft is buying 100 megawatts of solar capacity from Japanese developer Shizen Energy, the latest in a string of renewable energy deals designed to power the tech company's growing compute needs. The agreement, which the companies announced late last week, covers four different solar developments; one is already operating and three are under construction. The deal covers output from the plants for 20 years. Seattle-based Microsoft already operates two data centers in Japan. Microsoft's compute capacity is slated to expand as the company invests $2.9 billion in the country over the next year.
If you're looking to upgrade your laptop, there are already some solid Prime Day laptop deals available. While this season's Prime Day (formally known as Prime Big Deal Days) doesn't start until Tuesday, major brands like Apple, HP, Dell and Microsoft are offering up early discounts-including 21% off the Microsoft Surface Pro (our pick for the best 2-in-1 laptop for working from home) and 25% off the Dell 14 Plus (our favorite Dell laptop overall).
