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The AI data center building boom isn’t fueling just water shortage concerns and GPU-maker Nvidia’s coffers. It is now also firmly making memory chip makers and their investors significantly richer. Yesterday, two of the largest memory makers, Micron Technology and Sandisk, saw their stock prices soar more than 11% in a single trading session. And those gains are small potatoes compared to their five-day increases. But why is this happening? Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Yesterday, all four of the Nasdaq’s major memory chip makers saw their stock prices jump. Those four memory makers include: Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq: MU) Sa…

A note to corporations everywhere: Asking politely for the internet to stop making fun of you often has the opposite effect. Microsoft may have just learned that lesson the hard way, after it accidentally helped a not-so-nice nickname go viral. As Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot is integrated into features across the company’s products—from its controversial Recall feature, to a dedicated AI button on Windows keyboards—it’s catching more and more flak, including a new term coined just to clown on Copilot: “Microslop,” a portmanteau of “Microsoft” and “AI slop.” The word was flying freely on Microsoft’s official Copilot Discord server, until users noticed a new fi…

Xbox employees and players can rest assured that the console’s future is safe from the threat of artificial intelligence, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says. That’s per an internal Q&A with incoming Xbox CEO Asha Sharma, Windows Central reported Sunday. Xbox—along with Nintendo’s consoles and Sony’s PlayStation line—has rounded out the big three video game consoles for decades. But last month, there were rumors of its demise: Xbox cofounder Seamus Blackley speculated that Microsoft is “sunsetting” the company’s main player in the video game industry because it wasn’t an AI focus for Microsoft. Longtime Xbox boss Phil Spencer resigned last month, and Sharma, who was …

Clippy, the animated paper clip that annoyed Microsoft Office users nearly three decades ago, might have just been ahead of its time. Microsoft introduced a new artificial intelligence character called Mico (pronounced MEE’koh) on Thursday, a floating cartoon face shaped like a blob or flame that will embody the software giant’s Copilot virtual assistant and marks the latest attempt by tech companies to imbue their AI chatbots with more of a personality. Copilot’s cute new emoji-like exterior comes as AI developers face a crossroads in how they present their increasingly capable chatbots to consumers without causing harm or backlash. Some have opted for faceless s…

Rumors have been circulating online that Microsoft is preparing to cut tens of thousands of jobs. TipRanks reported that the company is “considering massive layoffs” this month, potentially eliminating between 11,000 and 22,000 roles across the Azure Cloud, Xbox, and global sales teams. According to The Seattle Times, the claims appear to have originated on anonymous online forums like Reddit and Blind before rapidly spreading across Bluesky and X, drawing widespread attention and, in turn, swift denials from Microsoft executives. Microsoft’s chief communications officer, Frank X. Shaw, took to X to refute the rumors, calling them “100 percent made up/speculative…

Last week, subscribers of Microsoft’s Game Pass were in an uproar over plans to hike the price from $19.99 per month to $29.99. One of the most surprising reactions, however, came not from gamers, but from retail partner GameStop. While you’ll pay $30 per month if you sign up for Game Pass Ultimate directly with Microsoft, you’ll get the same old price — for some indefinite period — if you stick with GameStop. “Xbox Game Pass Ultimate is still $19.99 a month with us. You’re welcome,” the retailer wrote in a social media post. Gamers can subscribe to GamePass directly from their XBox, via their PC, and on the web. Those who plan to take advantage of the lower price …

News that Microsoft was reportedly planning to pause its carbon removal purchases has rocked the still-nascent carbon removal industry. The company helped drive the market: In fiscal year 2025 alone, it made deals with 21 companies around the world to remove a record 45 million tons of CO2. Those deals included new contracts with companies like Re.green, which is restoring a swath of the Amazon rainforest, and Vaulted, which removes carbon by burying organic waste. Last month, it added a contract with Liferaft, a company making biochar from agricultural waste in the Midwest. The industry uses a wide range of technologies to tackle one part of the climate challenge: at…

The tech industry is often cautious about tying layoffs to performance, even if it might play a role in who gets dismissed during widespread job cuts. But this year has signaled a noticeable shift in how some of the biggest players in tech approach layoffs: Earlier this year, Meta cut more than 3,000 employees in a move that the company framed as “non-regrettable attrition.” The number of Amazon employees on performance improvement plans reportedly surged in recent years, leading up to layoffs—and Microsoft has allegedly cut thousands of employees who were classified as “low performers.” Now Microsoft is giving low performers the option to accept a payout and leave th…

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to select employees, it announced in a memo on Thursday, CNBC reported. The move is a first for the company, as the tech industry at large faces shifts in the era of artificial intelligence. The program will be available to U.S. workers at the senior director level and below whose employment years and age add up to at least 70. Employees with sales incentive plans are ineligible. Those who qualify and their managers will receive more information on May 7, according to the memo. The plan is expected to take effect in the fourth quarter of Microsoft’s fiscal year 2026, which ends June 30. About 7% of the U.S. workforce is expe…

Friday’s news of a major shakeup at Microsoft’s Xbox division caught the gaming world by surprise. Phil Spencer, who has run Xbox for almost 12 years, announced his retirement, effective immediately—just months after Microsoft insisted he was “not retiring anytime soon.” Asha Sharma, the president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product, was tapped to run the division. Once a powerhouse earner, Xbox has seen its profitability and influence shrink in recent years. (Xbox president Sarah Bond, long seen as Spencer’s heir apparent, was passed over and also left the company.) Sharma may face an uphill battle. Microsoft has not reported updated Xbox console sales or Game Pass…

A year ago today, Microsoft unveiled what it believed would be the future of home computing. Copilot+ PCs, optimized to harness the power of AI, were introduced with the promise of revolutionizing how we interact with our laptops and desktops. The reaction, however, was far from enthusiastic. Critics mocked the addition of an AI button on the keyboard, likening it to the redundant action keys from late-1990s PCs. More concerning was the backlash to Recall, a feature designed to continuously record user activity to provide smarter assistance. Many found the idea invasive. Public alarm grew when it became clear that Recall stored this data off-device, raising serious pr…

On Tuesday, Microsoft said it is cutting less than 3% of its global workforce, including LinkedIn. The company which an estimated 228,000 employees as of last June, meaning the layoffs will affect approximately 6,000 employees. The tech giant, which makes popular software products Windows and Word, will make cuts across various locations, teams, and roles. “We continue to implement organizational changes necessary to best position the company for success in a dynamic marketplace,” a Microsoft spokesperson told Fast Company. The news comes less than two weeks after the Redmond, Washington-based company beat first quarter earnings expectations, driven by its Azure c…

Microsoft just redesigned all of its Office icons to embrace the AI era, and, according to the company, that means ditching solid shapes for all things “fluid and vibrant.” The 12 new icons, which began rolling out on October 1, encompass all of Microsoft’s platforms from Outlook to Word Documents and Teams. This is the first time that Microsoft has updated the icons’ aesthetics in seven years, and the company’s designers have reworked every logo to be curvier, brighter, and more colorful. “Today, as we roll out refreshed icons for Microsoft 365 apps, small but significant design changes are a reflection and a signal,” a Microsoft blog post, published on October 1…

Microsoft said Tuesday it is partnering with artificial intelligence company Anthropic and chipmaker Nvidia as part of a cloud infrastructure deal that moves the software giant further away from its longtime alliance with OpenAI. Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, said it is committed to buying $30 billion in computing capacity from Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform. As part of the partnership, Nvidia will also invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic, and Microsoft will invest up to $5 billion in the San Francisco-based startup. The joint announcements by CEOs Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Satya Nadella of Microsoft…

Microsoft said Wednesday that its profit for the October-December quarter grew 10% as it works to capitalize on the huge amounts of money it has spent to advance its artificial intelligence technology. But while its overall profits and revenue beat Wall Street expectations, it slightly missed projections for its closely watched cloud computing business, a centerpiece of its AI efforts. The company reported net income for the quarter of $24.1 billion, or $3.23 per share, beating Wall Street expectations of $3.11 per share. The Redmond, Washington-based software maker posted revenue of $69.6 billion in the quarter, up 12% from the previous year, also beating expectations.…

Microsoft released its annual Work Trend Index report on Tuesday, which argued that 2025 is the year that companies stop simply experimenting with AI and start building it into key missions. As part of its release, Microsoft put together a glossary that it says is comprised of “new terms to know for a new world of work.” Here’s the list: Agent: An AI-powered system that can reason, plan, and act to complete tasks or entire workflows autonomously, with human oversight at key moments. Agent boss: A human manager of one or more agents. Capacity gap: The deficit between business demands and the maximum capacity of humans alone to meet them. Digital lab…

At Microsoft’s Ignite conference on November 18, the company unveiled new AI-powered software features designed to make coders’ lives easier—including a tool to automatically fix security issues as new vulnerabilities are discovered. “Over this past year, the nature of being a software engineer has really started to change,” says Amanda Silver, corporate vice president and head of product for apps and agents at Microsoft. “And our focus has been on tackling the most miserable, soul-draining parts of the job and really transforming them, so that developers can kind of bring joy back to their day-to-day lives.” One result of that effort is an AI offering, now in …

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone was looking for connection wherever they could find it. To connect with friends, maybe that meant playing a long-distance round of Among Us. To connect with family, perhaps you hopped on a group FaceTime. And to connect with coworkers, you used Microsoft Teams’ beloved Together mode for meetings. . . . Oh, wait, you didn’t do that? Launched in 2020, Together mode transformed virtual meetings within Teams. Rather than displaying a standard Zoom-style array of each attendee in their own box with their own background, Together used AI to cut out each person’s head and shoulders, then composited them next to each ot…

Artificial intelligence has rapidly started finding its place in the workplace, but this year will be remembered as the moment when companies pushed past simply experimenting with AI and started building around it, Microsoft said in a blog post accompanying its annual Work Trend Index report. As part of this shift, Microsoft is dubbing 2025 the year of the “Frontier Firm.” “Like the digital native companies of a generation ago, they understand the power of pairing irreplaceable human insight with AI and agents to unlock outsized value,” Jared Spataro, CMO of AI at Work at Microsoft, said in the post. These so-called Frontier Firms will be built around “on-dem…

Microsoft said Monday it will be shipping Nvidia‘s most advanced artificial intelligence chips to the United Arab Emirates as part of a deal approved by the U.S. Commerce Department. The Redmond, Washington software giant said licenses approved in September under “stringent” safeguards enable it to ship more than 60,000 Nvidia chips, including the California chipmaker’s advanced GB300 Grace Blackwell chips, for use in data centers in the Middle Eastern country. The agreement appeared to contradict President Donald The President’s remarks in a “60 Minutes” interview aired Sunday that such chips would not be exported outside the U.S. Asked by CBS News’ Norah O’D…

Quantum researchers are in a race for qubits, and Microsoft is in the thick of the competition. Microsoft has spent the last 20 years pursuing a topological approach to quantum development. Last week, they had a breakthrough: The company counted eight topological qubits on their Majorana 1 chip. They published a paper in Nature, got a glowing New York Times piece about a “new state of matter,” and buoyed quantum stocks across the market. Eight qubits isn’t anywhere near what would be needed to reach full-scale quantum computing. That number is in the millions, and they would need to be error-corrected. Other companies, like IBM and Google, are much further ahead …

Microsoft’s cloud computing and artificial intelligence business helped deliver $70.1 billion in sales and boosted profits by 18% for the January-March quarter, a dose of relief for investors during a turbulent time for the tech sector and U.S. economy. The company reported quarterly net income of $25.8 billion, or $3.46 per share, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings of $3.22 a share. The Redmond, Washington-based software maker posted revenue of $70.1 billion in the period, its third fiscal quarter, up 13% from the same period a year ago and also beating Wall Street expectations. Analysts polled by FactSet expected Microsoft to post revenue of $68.44 billion …

We’ve all heard the familiar directive: “We’re going through another reorganization and will be cutting 20% of headcount, but priorities remain the same and, in fact, may expand.” Meanwhile, you’re being told to “just make it work” without offering additional resources, guidance, or support. This conversation, unfortunately, isn’t unique. It represents the silent crisis engulfing middle management across America. Middle managers—who oversee 90% of the U.S. workforce—are facing unprecedented challenges in 2025. Recent KPMG data reveals nearly one-third are actively disengaged, while 62% report unsustainable stress levels as they struggle with expanded responsibilit…

The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more. Ageism in Hollywood is a tale as old as time. It’s well-documented that older women have been less represented in mainstream media and female actors over 40 are less likely to get work compared to their male counterparts. The stigma surrounding aging women in entertainment has been so pervasive that many actresses have felt forced to hide the natural realities of aging. Actr…