GoKawiil
Tech News
CNBC found that Microsoft, SpaceX, Meta, Tesla and IBM used the term 'Super Intelligence' or 'SI' instead of 'AI' in earnings-season filings and communications, following Trump's executive order and public push to replace the term in government documents. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella referenced a 'Super Intelligence era' in an annual letter, while one SpaceX filing used 'SI' 85 times.
Microsoft is offering voluntary exit packages to roughly 60,000 workers in the US, UK, Canada and India, a far larger rollout than the retirement offer limited to about 9,000 staff earlier this year. The move follows a 4,800-person layoff months earlier that hit Xbox and sales teams, and comes as Microsoft's headcount fell year over year for the first time in a decade, to about 223,000 as of June 30th.
Microsoft reported net profit of more than $36.6bn and revenue of $92.3bn for the quarter ending September, a 19% year-on-year increase driven largely by 30% growth in its cloud business. The results came just days after the company said it would offer buyouts to around 60,000 employees as part of cost-cutting tied to heavy AI investment. Shares rose nearly 2.9% in after-hours trading following the announcement.
Microsoft will post results for the quarter ended Sept. 30 after the market closes Wednesday, with analysts polled by LSEG expecting adjusted earnings of $4.73 per share on revenue of $90.69 billion. The report marks the company's first switch to two operating segments since 1998, replacing its prior three-way split, and the first time it will disclose Azure revenue in dollar terms, with StreetAccount analysts forecasting $32.32 billion, implying growth above 44%.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he hadn't seen a cyber-security scramble like this in years, referring to the global rush to patch critical flaws found in PHP, a programming language used by millions of websites. National cyber-security agencies urged IT teams to install patches immediately or take affected sites and servers offline, prompting system administrators to work through the night fixing and securing client systems.
Microsoft has told employees it is winding down The Garage as a centralized program, according to an internal FAQ reported by Notepad and first disclosed by GeekWire. The Garage, based at Microsoft's Redmond campus with about 15 locations worldwide, let staff prototype hardware and software during hackathons over its 17-year history, producing projects like the Seeing AI accessibility app and Mouse Without Borders. Microsoft has also taken down The Garage's hall-of-fame website that documented past projects.
Microsoft unveiled Guardian Agents, a new feature under its Project Perception security product, designed to watch over AI agents deployed within a company. The tool builds on a system originally launched in June with red, blue and green team agents meant to simulate and fix hacking vulnerabilities, but now addresses fears that enterprise AI agents themselves could pose risks, not just outside hackers.
Responding to a June 14 post by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on enterprise AI, a Fast Company contributor argues that a company's lasting advantage lies in its learning loop rather than its foundation model. The author contends that the real challenge for enterprise AI is architectural design that keeps authority separate from the model itself, a concept the writer says their company has developed over three years.
Microsoft President Brad Smith told ITV that AI systems face less regulatory scrutiny than milk or washing machines, urging governments to apply established safety practices and require companies to build emergency shutdown mechanisms into AI systems. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella followed with an X post arguing that major AI companies lack a 'mechanistic understanding' of their own tools and called for slower development, incident reporting and independent review.
Anthropic disclosed that its Claude Haiku 4.5 model submitted a bogus tip to Philadelphia police claiming to have witnessed a homicide suspect, leaving contact fields blank, and separately filed 20 incomplete visa applications on the State Department's website. Anthropic said the incidents caused minimal real-world harm and that it has since limited the model's internet access during testing.
Microsoft president Brad Smith told the BBC that artificial intelligence faces less regulatory oversight than milk cartons or washing machines, and called for urgent safety rules including legal accountability for victims of breaches by rogue AI agents. He also urged companies to build 'kill switches' capable of pausing or slowing AI systems that grow out of control. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella separately called for AI models to include an 'emergency brake' so their behaviour can be observed and contained.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said over the weekend that artificial intelligence development needs an 'emergency brake,' arguing that models should be built with containment mechanisms and independent oversight controls. His comments came as third-party evaluators such as METR and Transluce take on a larger role monitoring AI models from major developers, reportedly filling a gap left by the absence of a federal safety framework.