Microsoft

Microsoft signs massive carbon credit deal with reforestation startup Chestnut Carbon

Climate /

Microsoft announced Thursday that it’s buying over 7 million tons of carbon credits from Chestnut Carbon. The 25-year deal would enable Chestnut Carbon to reforest 60,000 acres of land across Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas, Axios reported. Recently, the tech company has struggled to rein in its carbon emissions as AI has driven a surge in […]

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Microsoft’s Copilot-focused Surface Pro and Laptop PCs ship with Snapdragon and Intel options

AI /

At an event in New York City on Thursday, Microsoft unveiled two additions to the Surface line of PCs. The new Surface Pro and Surface Laptop both arrive with Copilot+ PC certification. Announced in May 2024, the program aims to identify business-focused devices that are designed specifically for the company’s AI platform, Copilot. It’s a

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SoftBank in talks to invest as much as $25B in OpenAI, report says

AI /

SoftBank is in talks to invest up to $25 billion in OpenAI as part of a broader partnership that could see the Japanese conglomerate spend more than $40 billion on AI initiatives with the Microsoft-backed startup, according to the Financial Times. The potential investment would make SoftBank OpenAI’s largest single backer, the report said, surpassing

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LinkedIn passes $2B in premium revenues in 12 months, with overall revenues up 9% on the year

Enterprise /

LinkedIn, the social platform where people look for and talk about work, may be less visible in Microsoft’s earnings compared to the years when it was an independent company. But around earnings time, LinkedIn often reveals some figures that point to how it continues to grow.  On Wednesday, as Microsoft reported its Q2 numbers, the

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Microsoft brings a DeepSeek model to its cloud

Enterprise /

Microsoft’s close partner and collaborator, OpenAI, might be suggesting that DeepSeek stole its IP and violated its terms of service. But Microsoft still wants DeepSeek’s shiny new models on its cloud platform. Microsoft today announced that R1, DeepSeek’s so-called reasoning model, is available on Azure AI Foundry service, Microsoft’s platform that brings together a number

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Microsoft probing whether DeepSeek improperly used OpenAI APIs

AI /

Just a few hours after David Sacks claimed DeepSeek used OpenAI’s models to train its own models, Bloomberg Law reports that Microsoft is investigating DeepSeek’s use of OpenAI’s application programming interface (API). According to security researchers working for Microsoft, the Chinese company behind the R1 reasoning model may have exfiltrated a large amount of data

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Helion raises $425M to help build a fusion reactor for Microsoft

Fundraising /

Few fusion startups have been as closely watched as Helion. The 12-year-old company is backed by Sam Altman, rumored to be in talks with OpenAI, and has a deal to supply Microsoft with electricity by 2028 — years earlier than its competitors.  The company’s unorthodox approach to fusion power and relative secrecy has earned it

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Microsoft tests ‘scareware blocker’ for Edge that uses computer vision to detect scams

Apps /

Microsoft is rolling out a new tool dubbed “scareware blocker,” which uses machine learning and computer vision to identify a very pervasive type of online scam. “Scareware” has blighted the web almost since its inception, often in the form of fake antivirus software that claims to have detected a non-existent threat on a user’s machine.

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The EU wants to talk to US tech companies ahead of Germany’s upcoming election

Social /

The European Union will give tech and social media companies a “stress test” to see how they handle misinformation ahead of Germany’s election next month. European Commission officials have invited tech companies, including: X, Meta, Snap, TikTok, Google, Microsoft, and LinkedIn, to a meeting on January 31, according to multiple news outlets. During this meeting,

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