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.

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

Featured Article

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.

9:00 am PDT • March 31, 2024
The market is forcing cloud vendors to relax data egress fees

Featured Article

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.…

3:50 pm PDT • March 28, 2024
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

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…

After raising $1.3B, Inflection is eaten alive by its biggest investor, 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…

Microsoft hires Inflection founders to run new consumer AI division

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…

After AWS and Google, Microsoft says it’s removing Azure ‘egress’ data transfer fees — but with caveats

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…

Russian spies keep hacking into Microsoft in ‘ongoing attack,’ company says

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…

OpenAI says Musk only ever contributed $45M, wanted to merge with Tesla or take control

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…

Windows 11 to lose official support for Android apps

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…

Microsoft made a $16M investment in Mistral AI

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…

Mistral AI releases new model to rival GPT-4 and its own chat assistant

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…

Walmart’s PhonePe launches India app store in challenge to Google

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…

US military notifies 20,000 of data breach after cloud email leak

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 brings new design-focused features to Copilot

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…

Microsoft plans to train 2M Indians in AI, says Nadella

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.…

Cloud infrastructure saw its biggest revenue growth ever in Q4

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…

Microsoft, X throw their weight behind KOSA, the controversial kids online safety bill

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…

The Taylor Swift deepfake debacle was frustratingly preventable

On Friday, Microsoft revealed that it had been the victim of a hack carried out by Russian government spies. Now, a week later, the technology giant said that it was…

Microsoft says Russian hackers also targeted other organizations

Three months after completing its $68.7 billion acquisition of gaming company Activision Blizzard, Microsoft is laying off 1,900 employees in its gaming divisions. This amounts to about 8.6% of 22,000…

Microsoft lays off 1,900 employees in Activision Blizzard and Xbox divisions