Page 34 - Microsoft

MediaTek chip with Meta's Llama 2 for on-device generative AI coming soon

MediaTek said it expects Llama 2-based AI applications to become available for smartphones powered by its system-on-chip, which is scheduled to hit the market by the end of the year

Microsoft revamps deal for video game maker Activision Blizzard for UK

Microsoft revamped its bid to buy video game maker Activision Blizzard on Tuesday to appease British competition regulators, who are the last major hurdle to closing one of the biggest deals in tech history. The Competition and Markets Authority said it has opened a new preliminary investigation into the updated transaction with a deadline for a decision due on October 18. Xbox maker Microsoft has been on a quest to acquire Activision, maker of the popular Call of Duty game franchise since announcing the USD 69 billion deal in January 2022. The blockbuster deal has secured approvals from antitrust authorities covering 40 countries, including the European Union. But it has been held up in Britain, where authorities moved to block it earlier this year over worries about competition being stifled in the emerging cloud gaming market, where players can avoid buying pricey consoles and stream games to their tablets or phones. Under the restructured deal, Microsoft will sell the cloud ..

Alphabet's rapidly expanding $118 billion cash pile poses a new problem

Apple in the last five fiscal years has returned almost $5 billion more than the record $454 billion in cash it generated

Puneet Chandok appointed corporate VP of Microsoft India and South Asia

Tech giant Microsoft on Tuesday announced the appointment of Puneet Chandok as Corporate Vice President of Microsoft India and South Asia. Effective September 1, 2023, Chandok will assume the operational responsibilities from Anant Maheshwari, Microsoft said in a release. "Supported by a strong leadership team, Puneet will oversee the integration of Microsoft's businesses across South Asia, including Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, further boosting the company's presence in the region, while deepening its focus on key industries through a customer-centric approach with generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) at its core," it added.

Sebi bans Excel Realty N Infra, 4 others from securities mkt for upto 2 yrs

Sebi has barred five entities, including Excel Realty N Infra and its promoters, from the securities market for up to two years and levied a fine totalling Rs 1.75 crore on them for being involved in a fraudulent scheme of misrepresenting the company's financial statements. The barred entities are promoters of listed entity Excel Realty N Infra (Excel) -- Lakhmendra Chamanlal Khurana (Chairman & MD of Excel), Ranjana Khurana Lakhmendra and Arpit Lakhmendra Khurana -- and Pramod Yeshwant Kokate who was chief financial officer of Excel. On the basis of a complaint received by Sebi, the markets watchdog conducted a detailed examination into the affairs of Excel Realty N Infra for the period from April 2016 to March 2021. In its examination, Sebi found that the transactions executed by Excel with 24 seller parties amounting to around Rs 119 crore constituting approximately 66 per cent of the total assets of Excel from FY 2016-17 to 2020-21, were misrepresented in the balance sheet of .

EU opens antitrust investigation on Microsoft over Office, Teams bundling

The European Union announced Thursday that it opened a formal antitrust investigation targeting Microsoft into the software company's Teams messaging and videoconferencing app over concerns that its bundling with its Office productivity sofware suite gives it an unfair edge over competitors. The European Commission, the 27-nation bloc's top competition enforcer, said that it would carry out its in-depth investigation as a matter of priority. The investigation stems from a complaint filed in 2020 by Slack Technologies, which makes popular workplace messaging software. Slack, owned by business software maker Salesforce, alleged that Microsoft was abusing its market dominance to eliminate competition in violation of EU laws by illegally combining Teams with its Office productivity software suite.

Google, OpenAI to create industry watchdog to ensure safety of AI models

The effort, also backed by AI startup Anthropic and Microsoft, aims to consolidate the expertise of member companies and create benchmarks for the industry

Microsoft's Azure slowdown offsets optimism about AI growth; shares down 3%

Nadella has unveiled an array of new AI programs - based on models from partner OpenAI - for most of Microsoft's major product lines, and demand has been strong for internet-based services

Microsoft lays out spending plan to meet artificial intelligence demand

Wall Street is looking at how generative AI services may benefit Microsoft, which secured an early lead with investments in OpenAI, owner of the popular ChatGPT service

Google search engine emerges unfazed from Microsoft's Bing challenge

The world's fourth most valuable firm was set to add more than $100 billion to its market capitalisation, based on premarket movements

AI's promise on tech set for test with Microsoft, Alphabet Earnings

Bets that artificial intelligence will revolutionise Corporate America and deliver riches to the biggest companies behind it will get a test Tuesday, as Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc

Birlasoft, Microsoft collaborate for Generative AI Centre of Excellence

Birlasoft on Monday said it is establishing a Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) Centre of Excellence (CoE) with Microsoft for solutions across manufacturing, life sciences, energy and BFSI. The Gen AI-CoE will leverage Microsoft Azure's OpenAI Service for research, training, and collaboration, to build 50 use cases and digitally transform the above sectors, the company said in a statement. "Birlasoft already has more than 35 enterprise use cases ready for Generative AI adoption," a company spokesperson told PTI. The spokesperson added that Birlasoft will select 500 of its consultants across locations based on their profiles for upskilling them in Gen AI operations in the initial phase of this training. The trainings will be conducted in a hybrid mode by Microsoft specialists, Birlasoft domain experts and people from the industry, using online and recorded training sessions and in-person trainings, the spokesperson informed. Roop Singh, CEO Americas, Birlasoft said, "With

Amazon, Meta among firms to unveil AI safeguards after Biden's warning

Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and other companies that are leading the development of artificial intelligence technology have agreed to meet a set of AI safeguards brokered by President Joe Biden's administration. The White House said Friday that it has secured voluntary commitments from seven U.S. companies meant to ensure their AI products are safe before they release them. Some of the commitments call for third-party oversight of the workings of commercial AI systems, though they don't detail who will audit the technology or hold the companies accountable. A surge of commercial investment in generative AI tools that can write convincingly human-like text and churn out new images and other media has brought public fascination as well as concern about their ability to trick people and spread disinformation, among other dangers. The four tech giants, along with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and startups Anthropic and Inflection, have committed to security testing carried out in part by ...

Microsoft's AI bet pays off, Nadella's windfall passes $1 bn on stock surge

Tech giant faces German rival's EU antitrust complaint on its Teams, Office

We await new Microsoft proposal on Activision deal: UK antitrust regulator

It has been left increasingly isolated in opposition after US regulator, the FTC, failed to block it in court last week, and the CMA has taken the unprecedented step of reopening talks

Microsoft hit with EU antitrust complaint by German rival alfaview

This has significant and permanent impact on competition in the communication software market, alfaview continued

Merger regulations get tougher in crackdown by antitrust enforcers

The changes come on the heels of several bruising defeats for the government in blocking vertical mergers

Microsoft offers free security feature after alleged China cyber hack

Microsoft said its decision was "in response to increasing frequency and evolution of nation-state cyberthreats

Microsoft, Activision Blizzard extend deadline to close $69 bn deal

The deadline for Microsoft's USD 69 billion acquisition of video game company Activision Blizzard has been extended to as the companies seek to close a deal that has been challenged by regulators in the US, as well as by UK's Competition and Markets Authority. Microsoft believes that pushing back the deadline to Oct. 18 will provide enough time to work through the remaining regulatory issues, said Brad Smith, the company's president. We are confident about our prospects for getting this deal across the finish line, Smith said. The extension comes with a bigger termination fee, should the deal be called off, and a number of other new agreements. Tuesday marked an important deadline for the deal announced 18 months earlier. Both Microsoft and Activision had agreed that either party could walk away from the planned merger if it hadn't closed by then, triggering Microsoft to potentially have to pay a USD 3 billion breakup fee unless both sides decided to renegotiate. That termination

Meta opens AI chatbot tech 'LLaMA' for commercial use via Microsoft

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms has built an artificial intelligence system that rivals the likes of ChatGPT and Google's Bard but it's taking a different approach: releasing it for free. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Tuesday that the company is partnering with Microsoft to introduce the next generation of its AI large language model and making the technology, known as LLaMA 2, free for research and commercial use. Much like tech peers Google and Microsoft, the social media company has long had a big research team of computer scientists devoted to advancing AI technology. But it's been overshadowed as the release of ChatGPT sparked a rush to profit off of generative AI tools that can create new prose, images and other media. Meta has also tried to distinguish itself by being more open than some of its Big Tech rivals about offering a peek at the data and code it uses to build AI systems. It has argued that such openness makes it easier for outside researchers to help identify