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Microsoft

Microsoft

Corporate research program

Appears in 10 stories

Stories

Underwater data centers move from prototype to commercial buildout

Built World

Concluded research project; technical precedent for current buildout

A sealed steel capsule sits on the seabed off Shanghai's Nanhuizui coast, drawing more than 95% of its power from offshore wind turbines and using cold seawater to cool its servers. It is the world's first wind-powered underwater data center, and its operators have signed deals to scale the design into a 500-megawatt cluster.

Updated Yesterday

Meta kills Messenger’s native desktop apps, forcing a web-only future on Mac and Windows

Rule Changes

Microsoft Store removal and Windows desktop guidance push users to web/Facebook app

On December 15, 2025, Meta effectively bricked Messenger's standalone desktop apps: no more logins, no native client. Users got pushed to Messenger.com or Facebook.com.

Updated Yesterday

Anthropic targets Wall Street with packaged AI agents

New Capabilities

Distribution partner via Microsoft 365 integration

Wall Street's pitch decks, earnings reviews, and ledger reconciliations have long been the domain of junior analysts working late nights inside Excel. On May 5, 2026, Anthropic unveiled ten artificial intelligence (AI) agents that do those same jobs—running on its Claude Opus 4.7 model, embedded directly inside Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, and pulling live data on more than 600 million public and private companies from Moody's.

Updated May 5

Big tech's half-trillion-dollar AI bet

Money Moves

Q1 FY2026 beat: Azure 40% growth above guidance; $250B incremental OpenAI Azure contract; Fairwater 2GW Wisconsin facility; $34.9B quarterly capex tracking above annual guidance; OpenAI losses cost $3.1B/quarter

The four largest cloud providers—Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Amazon—are tracking toward over $720 billion in combined artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure spending for 2026, up sharply from $410 billion in 2025. All four reported first-quarter results on April 29, 2026, providing the first detailed test of whether AI revenues are keeping pace with record capital expenditure. Microsoft delivered the clearest signal: revenue of $77.7 billion (up 18% year-over-year), with Azure cloud growth of 40%—above the 37% it had guided—and earnings per share of $4.13 against analyst estimates of $3.67. Microsoft also disclosed that OpenAI has committed $250 billion in incremental Azure cloud service contracts, a figure that simultaneously validates Microsoft's infrastructure bet and deepens its financial exposure to OpenAI's monetization path. Quarterly capex came in at $34.9 billion, putting Microsoft on pace to exceed its $110–120 billion annual guidance if spending holds.

Updated Apr 29

AI takes over code authorship at major tech firms

New Capabilities

Launched first-ever voluntary buyout program (~7% of US workforce); AI, Azure OpenAI, and GitHub Copilot teams explicitly exempt

For most of computing's history, every line of production code at a major software company was typed by a human. Google CEO Sundar Pichai told an audience at Google Cloud Next 2026 on April 24 that 75 percent of new code at the company is now generated by artificial intelligence and reviewed by engineers afterward. That share was 25 percent in October 2024.

Updated Apr 26

The race to build AI's physical foundation

Built World

Azure capex exceeding $80B in 2025, OpenAI exclusive partner

ChatGPT's November 2022 launch triggered the fastest infrastructure buildout in tech history. Datacenter construction spending tripled from $15 billion to $45 billion annually in just two years. Hyperscalers are now on track to spend over $1 trillion in 2026—exceeding the GDP of all but 10 countries—racing to secure power, land, and cooling systems before their rivals. Alphabet shocked markets on February 4, 2026 with guidance of $175-185 billion in 2026 capex, 55-65% above Wall Street estimates of $119.5 billion. Amazon escalated the spending war on February 5 with $200 billion 2026 capex guidance after Q4 revenue of $213.4 billion and AWS growth of 24% to $35.6 billion. Microsoft reported $37.5 billion in capex for Q2 FY2026 (just one quarter), while Meta committed $6 billion to Corning for fiber-optic cables in late January, secured 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear power through three partnerships announced in early January 2026, confirmed a multi-billion Nvidia chip deal, and on February 24 announced a $60-100 billion, 6-gigawatt AMD GPU deal—diversifying away from Nvidia dominance. Recent March 2026 reports show up to 50% of global projects facing delays due to power shortages and community opposition, pushing hyperscalers toward international sites in India, Sweden, and Thailand.

Updated Mar 18

AI and the white-collar workforce

New Capabilities

Leading enterprise AI deployment through Copilot

Microsoft's AI chief Mustafa Suleyman told the Financial Times on February 13, 2026 that most white-collar work—accounting, legal, marketing, project management—will be fully automated within 12 to 18 months. It's the most aggressive timeline yet from a major tech executive, and it comes as AI coding assistants already generate 46% of code at companies using GitHub Copilot.

Updated Feb 14

Microsoft's ongoing battle against zero-day exploits

Rule Changes

Primary maintainer of Windows operating system security

Microsoft released its February 2026 Patch Tuesday update, fixing 58 security flaws including six zero-day vulnerabilities that attackers were already exploiting. The most severe allows attackers to bypass Windows SmartScreen protections, tricking users into running malicious software without seeing the usual security warnings. The United States Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) added all six vulnerabilities to its Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog, giving federal agencies until March 3, 2026, to patch their systems.

Updated Feb 11

Big Tech's power grab: the race to build private energy empires

New Capabilities

Restarting Three Mile Island Unit 1 under 20-year power purchase agreement

Google spent $4.75 billion over a year ago to acquire Intersect Power, owning the power plants feeding its AI data centers. Amazon bought a nuclear-powered campus in Pennsylvania. Microsoft restarted Three Mile Island in September 2024. Now Meta has announced nuclear deals unlocking up to 6.6 gigawatts—through partnerships with Vistra, TerraPower, and Oklo—to power American AI leadership. Tech giants aren't just buying electricity. They're securing or building the grid themselves.

Updated Feb 4

Who pays for AI's power appetite?

Rule Changes

First company to commit to consumer electricity cost protections

For decades, American households have paid roughly the same share of electricity costs regardless of which industries were expanding. AI data centers have broken that arrangement. In 2025, regions with concentrated data center activity saw wholesale electricity prices rise as much as 267% over five years, with the PJM grid operator—serving 65 million people across 13 states—projecting $100 billion in extra consumer costs through 2033 unless something changes.

Updated Jan 13