Search “Microsoft”

Microsoft offers voluntary severance packages to up to 60,000 employees

On October 26, 2026, Microsoft offered voluntary severance packages to employees at level 70 and below across teams in the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom, covering up to approximately 60,000 people, or about 27% of its global workforce; employees must decide by early December, and those who accept will leave the company by the end of the year. The Verge AI reported that this scale far exceeds the retirement plan offered to about 9,000 people earlier this year; as of June 30, Microsoft had approximately 223,000 employees, a decrease of 5,000 from the previous year. On October 29, Microsoft announced its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027, with Azure revenue up 48% year over year; the company said demand for AI infrastructure has exceeded available capacity; a few days before the earnings release, Microsoft offered voluntary departure packages to approximately 60,000 employees.

Microsoft announced Azure revenue grew 48% year-over-year

On October 26, 2026, Microsoft offered voluntary severance packages to employees at level 70 and below across teams in the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom, covering up to approximately 60,000 people, or about 27% of its global workforce; employees must decide by early December, and those who accept will leave the company by the end of the year. The Verge AI reported that this scale far exceeds the retirement plan offered to about 9,000 people earlier this year; as of June 30, Microsoft had approximately 223,000 employees, a decrease of 5,000 from the previous year. On October 29, Microsoft announced its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027, with Azure revenue up 48% year over year; the company said demand for AI infrastructure has exceeded available capacity; a few days before the earnings release, Microsoft offered voluntary departure packages to approximately 60,000 employees.

View story:Microsoft offers voluntary severance packages to up to 60,000 employees

Microsoft returns to the U.S. bond market, plans to raise at least $25 billion

Microsoft announced it is returning to the U.S. bond market, planning to raise at least $25 billion through up to 10 tranches—its first return to the U.S. bond market since its $17 billion issuance in 2017. According to Bloomberg, its 40-year bonds were priced close to the long-term bonds of Alphabet and Amazon, even though Microsoft carries a higher AAA rating. CNBC Technology reported that Microsoft is using its S&P AAA rating to finance infrastructure expansion, with management setting a 2026 capital expenditure target of $170 billion; net proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, potentially including working capital, capital expenditures, share repurchases, acquisitions and repayment of existing debt, with the offering expected to close on November 4. Follow-up reports said Microsoft has completed the $25 billion bond offering, with peak orders exceeding $115 billion and a subscription ratio of 4.6 times, across 10 bonds with maturities ranging from 2 to 40 years; however, its 30-year bond spread reached 95 basis points above the benchmark Treasury, wider than the 30-year bond issued the same week by lower-rated Procter & Gamble.

View story:Microsoft returns to the U.S. bond market, planning to raise at least $25 billion

Microsoft offers voluntary severance to up to 60,000 employees

On October 26, 2026, Microsoft offered voluntary severance packages to employees at level 70 and below across teams in the United States, Canada, India, and the United Kingdom, covering up to approximately 60,000 people, or about 27% of its global workforce; employees must decide by early December, and those who accept will leave the company by the end of the year. The Verge AI reported that this scale far exceeds the retirement plan offered to about 9,000 people earlier this year; as of June 30, Microsoft had approximately 223,000 employees, a decrease of 5,000 from the previous year. On October 29, Microsoft announced its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027, with Azure revenue up 48% year over year; the company said demand for AI infrastructure has exceeded available capacity; a few days before the earnings release, Microsoft offered voluntary departure packages to approximately 60,000 employees.

View story:Microsoft offers voluntary severance packages to up to 60,000 employees

Microsoft discloses $10 billion in quarterly revenue from OpenAI

Microsoft disclosed in a regulatory filing that it earned $10 billion in revenue from its commercial arrangement with OpenAI in the quarter ended September 30, accounting for nearly 11% of its total quarterly revenue of $92.3 billion. The same disclosure shows that revenue from OpenAI for the full 2026 fiscal year was $24.1 billion, or roughly $40 billion annualized at the latest quarterly pace. As of the end of September, Microsoft's receivables from OpenAI stood at $7.2 billion, up from $6 billion at the end of June; Microsoft's stake fell from about 25% in June to 24% in September. This information currently comes from TechCrunch AI's reporting on the regulatory filing, with no further developments yet.

Microsoft discloses $10 billion in quarterly revenue from OpenAI

Microsoft disclosed in a regulatory filing that it earned $10 billion in revenue from its commercial arrangement with OpenAI in the quarter ended September 30, accounting for nearly 11% of its total quarterly revenue of $92.3 billion. The same disclosure shows that revenue from OpenAI for the full 2026 fiscal year was $24.1 billion, or roughly $40 billion annualized at the latest quarterly pace. As of the end of September, Microsoft's receivables from OpenAI stood at $7.2 billion, up from $6 billion at the end of June; Microsoft's stake fell from about 25% in June to 24% in September. This information currently comes from TechCrunch AI's reporting on the regulatory filing, with no further developments yet.

View story:Microsoft discloses $10 billion in quarterly revenue from OpenAI

British detective investigated over alleged use of Copilot in criminal case decisions

The UK's Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is conducting a gross misconduct investigation into a senior detective at Derbyshire Constabulary over allegations that they used Microsoft Copilot to help make decisions in criminal cases. According to reports on its behalf, the detective is alleged to have used AI to make policy decisions, assess and manage risk, inform investigative decisions, and input case-related sensitive operational and personal information into the tool. Derbyshire Police approved officers' use of Copilot in May 2025 for drafting reports and summarizing information, but explicitly prohibited inputting operational, sensitive or personal data. The investigation will examine usage between May 2025 and June 2026, and no conclusions have yet been reached.

Microsoft Report Says Storm-0940 Used AI Agent Artex to Launch Cyberattacks

Microsoft released a report stating that the China-linked actor Storm-0940 used the open-source AI agent ARTEX to automate attacks against hundreds of organizations across different industries worldwide. The report notes that ARTEX was released as open source on GitHub and chains together multiple LLM agents, requiring almost no human intervention from reconnaissance to data theft; it uses ConnectWise's Microsoft 365 backup and management application keys to log in, bypassing user login and MFA, and in several intrusions it achieved cloud privileged access from the initial target in under 3 hours. The report also notes that most attack attempts failed, including one password spray that logged 151K+ failures with none succeeding, and that application login alone does not prove data was stolen. There are currently no further developments.

Microsoft report says Storm-0940 used AI agent Artex to launch cyberattacks

Microsoft released a report stating that the China-linked actor Storm-0940 used the open-source AI agent ARTEX to automate attacks against hundreds of organizations across different industries worldwide. The report notes that ARTEX was released as open source on GitHub and chains together multiple LLM agents, requiring almost no human intervention from reconnaissance to data theft; it uses ConnectWise's Microsoft 365 backup and management application keys to log in, bypassing user login and MFA, and in several intrusions it achieved cloud privileged access from the initial target in under 3 hours. The report also notes that most attack attempts failed, including one password spray that logged 151K+ failures with none succeeding, and that application login alone does not prove data was stolen. There are currently no further developments.

View story:Microsoft Report Says Storm-0940 Used AI Agent Artex to Launch Cyberattacks

Trump demands data centers generate their own power and pay dividends to communities

On October 21, 2026, Trump posted on Truth Social stating that large new data centers must generate their own power and pay cash "dividends" to their host communities. Related reports noted that the closest existing commitment is the Ratepayer Protection Pledge signed in March of that year by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and xAI, under which signatories pledged to build or purchase generating capacity and bear infrastructure upgrade costs, though experts believe the pledge may not be enforceable at the federal level. Trump said the dividend proposal goes further than that pledge. Reports on October 22 further stated that Trump also demanded that data centers supply surplus power to local communities free of charge or sell it to them, and noted that communities across the United States have continued to protest AI data center projects over rising electricity prices, noise, water shortages, and other issues. There are currently no facts on subsequent developments.

Porsche and others announce joint construction of a shared data flywheel for autonomous driving

Porsche, Volkswagen Group brands and CARIAD announce the joint construction of a shared data flywheel for autonomous driving development. The news was announced on October 21, 2026 at the NVIDIA GTC Berlin conference, with Porsche leading initial implementation and ecosystem integration, and Voxel51, NVIDIA and Microsoft participating. According to Voxel51, the group's connected fleet generates data each day equivalent to 11,000 ordinary drivers, and the goal of the cooperation is to reduce repetitive real-vehicle testing by up to 90% and shorten AI regression testing cycles by up to 85%. In terms of division of labor, Voxel51 provides the data layer and supports six workflows including multimodal retrieval, automatic annotation and scenario filtering, NVIDIA provides tools such as Cosmos Data Factory and Omniverse NuRec, and Microsoft Azure provides cloud and computing power. The cooperation is currently at the announcement stage, with no subsequent progress disclosed.

eMudhra admits weak private keys can be reverse-engineered with AI assistance

India-licensed certificate authority eMudhra admits that the private keys of its 8 intermediate certificates are all small numbers less than 256, which can be recovered by brute force, and holders could theoretically forge trusted certificates to impersonate websites. Mozilla and Chrome blocked these certificates on October 17, Apple and Microsoft followed suit, and eMudhra revoked the relevant certificates the next day, saying the affected global TLS business accounts for about 1% of its revenue. Researcher Dennis Jackson said an AI agent recovered the private key on its first attempt under a simple prompt, and Mozilla also independently recovered it within hours of receiving the report. CERT-In and CCA have not yet issued public statements on the matter.

WSJ sees Anthropic's draft IPO filing

The Wall Street Journal has seen Anthropic's draft IPO filing. A report dated October 21, 2026, said the draft showed Anthropic had first-half revenue of $16.3 billion and a book loss of $80.7 billion, with compute commitments of about $450 billion; the draft also disclosed fixed payments totaling $25.2 billion to Google, AWS and Microsoft over the next 7 to 10 years, payable whether or not the capacity is used. A report dated October 22 said the same draft showed first-half revenue of $16.3 billion, up nearly 14-fold year over year, and a net loss of $80.7 billion, of which about $72 billion came from the revaluation of financing instruments such as convertible notes; compute and infrastructure spending in the same period was nearly $9 billion, about 55% of revenue, and forward compute commitments exceeded $600 billion, potentially reaching as high as $750 billion if additional agreements are finalized. There is currently no further progress confirmed by factual evidence.