Tag: Microsoft

Anthropic’s Cowork gets tapped by Microsoft Copilot

Microsoft’s version of Copilot is entirely cloud based, pleasing many enterprise customers. (Picture: Microsoft)
While announcing Claude availability in «mainline Copilot chats,» Microsoft is also launching its version of the Cowork agent.

Copilot Cowork works mainly across Microsoft’s own Office 365-offerings, and can author emails in Outlook, manage calendars and create files in PowerPoint, Word and Excel, Microsoft says.

— When you hand off a task to Cowork, it turns your request into a plan. The plan continues in the background, with clear checkpoints so you can confirm progress, make changes, or pause execution at any time, they write.

Anthropic’s Cowork does much of the same for general office workloads, and is available as a separate app — with connectors for popular services and tasks.

It works locally on your computer to complete tasks, but Microsoft’s version is cloud-based, and works the data companies have uploaded, offering more diversity and control of their data.

Read more: Microsoft’s presentation and blog post. Writeups on Reuters, The Register and VentureBeat.

OpenAI closing in on $100 billion funding round at $830B valuation

The big guns are all out for OpenAI’s latest funding round. (Picture: generated)
In what looks like one of the strongest funding rounds in history, OpenAI is getting investments from SoftBank and half of the Magnificent Seven.

SoftBank and Nvidia will be the largest investors, clocking in at $30 billion each, while Amazon will pitch in «potentially» $20 billion and Microsoft will contribute «less than» $10 billion, according to Reuters and The Information.

Apparently, Amazon’s investment could come with a caveat that OpenAI expands its cloud server rental with the company, which will likely not be a large hitch.

This will also be SoftBank’s second investment in OpenAI, after recently completing a $41 billion investment, and selling out Nvidia.

That would bring their holdings to $71 billion, which is still short of Microsoft’s reported stake of $135 billion.

Read more: Reuters, and The Information, summarized by Reuters.

Court filings: Microsoft has 27% stake in OpenAI worth ~$135 billion

Microsoft has access to OpenAI’s tech until 2032. (Picture: generated)
Discovery papers and messages are surfacing from the Elon Musk vs. OpenAI trial, and GeekWire is busy compiling them.

From the papers, it seems Microsoft was ready with a whole new AI subsidiary to form after Sam Altman’s ouster as CEO in November 2023 — complete with a legal framework, ready to send to the Washington Secretary of State at a moments notice.

They had already budgeted for about $25 billion in costs to «absorb the OpenAI team.»

When Altman returned to OpenAI after a short while, he was already discussing possible board members with Microsoft.

The winner of the early story seems to be Microsoft, retaining leverage over «Major Decisions» up until the for profit reorganization of OpenAI.

Microsoft also retains the rights to OpenAI’s technology until 2032. Musk is suing for breach of contract/trust and is demanding $134 billion from OpenAI.

Read the full scoop at GeekWire.

Anthropic partners with Nvidia, Microsoft in $30 billion Azure deal

Anthropic nets a Microsoft investment, and promises to use it all on Microsoft's Azure.
Nvidia and Anthropic will optimize for each other, and use Microsoft’s cloud. (Picture: generated)
The companies will invest some $15 billion in Anthropic, while the AI lab commits to $30B in spending on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud offering.

— We’re increasingly going to be customers of each other. We will use Anthropic models, they will use our infrastructure and we’ll go to market together, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said, according to Reuters.

The agreement means Anthropic will optimize their software stack to better run on Nvidia’s hardware, while Nvidia will «optimize for Anthropic workloads.»

Continue reading “Anthropic partners with Nvidia, Microsoft in $30 billion Azure deal”

Microsoft forms «superintelligence» team, aims for human-centric AGI

Microsoft will start making in-house AI models to compete on the frontier level
The software behemoth is going all in on AGI, after a new agreement with OpenAI finally lets them. (Picture: generated)
No longer hampered by their agreement with OpenAI on AI models, Microsoft’s AI Chief, Mustafa Suleyman, plans to join the race for Artificial General Intelligence.

Before OpenAI’s reorganization, Microsoft could not pursue its own frontier models — relying instead on other people’s tech.

This is now gone, and Suleyman wants to build a «world-class, frontier-grade research capability in-house,» Business Insider writes.

He says Microsoft is making major investments in compute, expanding its chip development and is optimizing its infrastructure for AI:

— It’s the number one priority for us to make sure this is the most performant infrastructure in the world, he said in an earlier meeting.

Read the full story at Business Insider.

Big Tech doubles down on even bigger AI spend

Big tech will spend about a quarter of a trillion dollars on "capital expenditures" this year, according to quarterly reports.
Data center deals are flourishing and none of the big tech spenders feel they can afford not be in the race. (Picture: Adobe)
Quarterly results are in for Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta — and while the numbers are mixed, they all agree on big capital expenditures — needed for building data centers — for fiscal year 2025.

The coming AI wars will be fought with data centers and gigawatts, and nobody wants to lose out.

Continue reading “Big Tech doubles down on even bigger AI spend”

Weekend roundup; Altman on bubbles, LinkedIn trains on content and more

Investors are starting to worry about overextension in the AI market after a week of strong spending.
Bubble or not, OpenAI grows faster than any company in history — and they need more compute. (Picture: Adobe)
Altman on bubble-talk: «I totally get that»
After a week of announcements and deals totaling somewhere in the ballpark of some $850 billion — or almost half of the expected AI infrastructure spending in the coming years, MSNBC asked him if this might be overkill and wether the market was getting overheated. Said Altman «I totally get that. I think that’s a very natural thing» he added that «This is what it takes to deliver AI,» and that «We are growing faster than any business I’ve ever heard of before»
Read the full story at MSNBC.

Your LinkedIn data will be used for training
LinkedIn says it will start training Microsoft’s AI on profiles, posts, resumes and public activities on the site from November 3, 2025 — and it’s enabled by default. There is an opt-out option, but that only works on future content after you click it, and everything written before that will be used. It affects all users, including in the EU, the EEA, in Switzerland, Canada, Hong Kong, the UK, and also in the USA. Here’s a helpful page on the consequences and how to fight it.
More at TechRadar and Proton.me.

Read on for more!

Continue reading “Weekend roundup; Altman on bubbles, LinkedIn trains on content and more”

Weekend roundup; Chrome gets Gemini, Microsoft goes Claude and Veo comes to Youtube

Google is letting Gemini loose on the world's most popular browser.
While others are still struggling with the AI-based browser, Google is going all-in with Chrome. (Picture: Google)

Google goes nuclear; brings Gemini to Chrome
While OpenAI is still working on a browser and others are cautious or have failed to take off, Google is done waiting. They are now building the Gemini assistant directly into the world’s most popular browser. «Gemini with Chrome» will navigate and summarize your tabs for you, offer helpful suggestions in the URL bar, and should soon help you order stuff online. It can even find your closed tabs and search for references inside Youtube videos. It’s rolling out to Mac and Windows users with language set to English as of this writing. They call it «a new era of browsing.»
More at Google’s launch page, Google’s overview and launch thread.

Hands-on with Meta’s new Ray-Bans
Has Meta found the Goldilocks zone of smart glasses? Their recently launched Ray-Bans with an internal screen seems to have hit the sweet spot with reviewers. The Verge calls them the best smart glasses out there, Tom’s Hardware says it «feels like the future,» and Gizmodo writes that you’re going to want a pair. The consensus seems to be that the in-lens screen is quite useful, just about bright enough and it hits the sweet spot with the new wristband.
More at Mashable’s roundup.

Read on for more!

Continue reading “Weekend roundup; Chrome gets Gemini, Microsoft goes Claude and Veo comes to Youtube”

Friday roundup: OpenAI deals with Microsoft, makes a movie, and Albania gets an AI-generated minister

The first feature length movie made almost entirely by AI is set to debut at next year's Cannes Festival.
Made with «OpenAI resources,» this movie is built from animated uploaded drawings and prompts. (Picture: Screenshot, Critterz)
Microsoft agrees with OpenAI to keep talking
Microsoft is in a complex business relationship with OpenAI, where the early investor gets access to the latest AI tech and OpenAI gets access to computing power. They have just reached a “non-binding memorandum of understanding (MOU) for the next phase of our partnership.” This could allow OpenAI to go for-profit, under the control of a non-profit entity said to retain an ownership stake of more than $100 billion. Many takes on this today, but OpenAI has been moving away from Microsoft for funding, operations and cloud computing lately. The final deal will likely include some kind of a new investment in the now $500 billion company, and may unlock further market opportunities for OpenAI.
More at: OpenAI and Microsoft’s joint statement, x.com announcement, Reuters, Axios.

OpenAI goes to the movies
A new animated a-list movie, «Critterz» is under development using «OpenAI’s resources.» It should be ready for the Cannes Film Festival, meaning production time will be drastically sped up to only nine months. The script is written by part of the team from «Paddington in Peru», and it is spearheaded by Chad Nelson, who is a creative specialist at OpenAI. The technique looks to be to feed drawings to a large language model and have it animate them. The movie therefore streamlines animation, but wont skimp on voice actors, Gizmodo writes.
More at: The Wall Street Journal, Gizmodo and Engadget.

Read on for more news!

Continue reading “Friday roundup: OpenAI deals with Microsoft, makes a movie, and Albania gets an AI-generated minister”

Friday roundup: A good week for coding, speech models

Coding and speech models grab the headlines for this weeks roundup.
Both OpenAI and Microsoft are out with speech-to-speech models this week. (Picture: OpenAI)
OpenAI makes Realtime API generally available
The agentic Realtime model is a native speech-to-speech model that can be used to make customer service agents, phone reps and voice navigation features. It doesn’t go through speech-to-text and text-to-speech loops and generates audio «directly through a single model and API.» OpenAI is marketing this to developers who want more natural flowing speech, and it’s not available as distinct model in ChatGPT – yet. You can hear it and see it in use at places like Zillow, T-mobile, StubHub and Oscar Health, though. With general availability, it will surely show up in a lot more places soon.
More at: OpenAI’s launch page, discussion on r/OpenAI.

Read on for more news!

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Microsoft Research: These are the jobs most vulnerable to AI disruption

There's a direct comparison between tasks performed by AI and the actual jobs that do them, says Microsoft.
Microsoft produces a big, scary list. (Picture: Adobe)
The company behind the Copilot chatbot has compared the tasks most frequently performed by AI to actual jobs doing the work.

The result might not be all that surprising, as AI is used the most to solve issues in translation, communication and writing — and is least used in areas such as construction and other manual labor.

Data is from 2024
From studying some 200,000 anonymized copilot sessions in the USA during 2024, Microsoft has been able to produce a list of the 40 most vulnerable jobs — and the 40 least affected ones.

Continue reading “Microsoft Research: These are the jobs most vulnerable to AI disruption”

Microsoft launches experimental Copilot Mode for Edge

Copilot mode in Edge feels like they just moved the icon to the address bar.
Edge’s new Copilot Mode doesn’t do much just yet, and isn’t agentic.
It’s still a little rough around the edges, is not agentic and can’t support doing tasks.

The idea of turning on Copilot Mode is to get it involved in your tabs and research, to distill info from web pages and do basic tasks.

Continue reading “Microsoft launches experimental Copilot Mode for Edge”

With help from top AI labs, American teachers to get better, free training

AFT, the teacher's union is partnering with Big AI for better training on ethical classroom use.
ChatGPT usage is way up in K-12 schools, and now teachers are getting a leg up in how to use it better. (Picture: Wesley Fryer, CC BY 2.0)
With help and funding from Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic, the American Federation of Teachers hopes to educate 400 000 teachers across the USA in ethical AI use in classrooms.

The program will begin right away with virtual, online training for all 1.8 million members of the union, and in New York City with a «three-day training session, including six hours of AI-focused material that highlighted practical, hands-on ways to marry the emerging technology with established pedagogy.»

Already used by a fourth of students
According to the latest data, from February 2025, 79% of teens said they had heard about ChatGPT, while 26% admitted to using it in schoolwork — and there are a plethora of other tools available.

Continue reading “With help from top AI labs, American teachers to get better, free training”

AI use to become mandatory at Microsoft division

A bellwether for the industry as a whole? Microsoft division mandates AI use.
Usage of AI will become part of permanence reviews at this Microsoft division. (Picture: Ryan Vaarsi, CC BY 2.0)
The developer tools division head at Microsoft, Julia Liuson, recently sent out a memo to managers bluntly saying that «Using AI is no longer optional.»

— AI is now a fundamental part of how we work, she wrote. — Just like collaboration, data-driven thinking, and effective communication, using AI is no longer optional — it’s core to every role and every level.

Employee evaluations should now include their use of AI tools, she says, and managers are rushing to find a formal metric to measure it.

Internal performance requirements at Microsoft vary from team to team, and this is just one division. But it shows how quickly companies are adopting the technology.

Across all of Microsoft, it is estimated that 30% of all coding is already done by AI.

Go read the full scoop at Business Insider, the discussion on r/Singularity, and check out Tag: Work

Microsoft NLWeb tools offer easy AI search for any website

NLWeb is touted as a revolution, but it's catching on just yet.
NLWeb will turn search queries into chatbots, but uptake is not revolutionary, just yet. (Picture: Microsoft)
According to Microsoft, it’s the biggest thing on the web since HTML, leveraging easy code to include on websites and turning them into an AI chatbot app.

This should let websites easily tune into the revolution of AI search, allowing for natural language processing right from the search bar, says Microsoft.

Natural language process as revolution
This is fourth revolution in computers, says Ramanathan V. Guha, a technical fellow at Microsoft, — being able to communicate with applications, and computers in general, with free-form language, to The Verge.

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