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US antitrust enforcers have decided to investigate the roles Microsoft, Nvidia and OpenAI have played in the artificial intelligence boom, according to people familiar with the pending actions. The Department of Justice will launch an investigation of chipmaker Nvidia, while the Federal Trade Commission will scrutinise close business partners Microsoft and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, according to two people who were not authorised to publicly discuss details of the investigations and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. Nvidia and OpenAI declined to comment Thursday. Microsoft didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Times was first to report Thursday on a deal between antitrust regulators at the two agencies. Emboldened by President Joe Biden's push for tougher scrutiny of Big Tech's business practices, federal officials have signalled for more than a year that they've been watching out for monopolistic behaviour in the rapidly advancing ...
Microsoft Chief Satya Nadella on Thursday announced the expansion of Microsoft's 'Code Without Barriers' programme to India, aiming to train 75,000 women developers by 2024. The programme is to democratise access to tech skills nationwide, the chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft said, as he spoke about the impact Indian developers are making in accelerating AI innovation globally during his address to 1,100 developers and technology leaders at the Microsoft AI Tour here. "One of the things that I'm very excited also is to bring one of the initiatives which we've had called Code Without Barriers, and expanding to India and really helping 75,000 women developers by 2024," Nadella said. According to Microsoft, "Code Without Barriers" programme will be expanded to India this month, as the company aims to democratise access to tech skills nationwide. "The programme was launched in 2021 across nine Asia Pacific (APAC) countries to help close the gender gap in the region's .
Microsoft Teams is experiencing an outage that has blocked access and limited features for some users. The issue began around 11 a.m. Eastern Time Friday and grew rapidly in scope, according to outage tracker DownDetector. Users have complained of an inability to access the service, delays in sending and receiving messages, and issues displaying graphics. Microsoft said in messages on X, the social network formerly known as Twitter, that it has identified a networking issue impacting a portion of the Teams service and had moved the affected processes to a backup system.
British regulators have blocked Microsoft's USD 69 billion deal to buy video game maker Activision Blizzard over worries that it would stifle competition in the cloud gaming market. The Competition and Markets Authority said in its final report Wednesday that the only effective remedy to the significant loss of competition that the deal would result in is to prohibit the Merger. The all-cash deal was set to be the biggest in the history of the tech industry. But it faces stiff opposition from rival Sony and is also being scrutinised by regulators in the US and Europe over fears that it would give Microsoft control of popular game franchises like Call of Duty. Microsoft said it was disappointed and signalled it wasn't ready to give up. We remain fully committed to this acquisition and will appeal, President Brad Smith said in a statement. He said the UK watchdog's decision rejects a pragmatic path to address competition concerns" and discourages tech innovation and investment in th