The cuts affected multiple divisions, together pulsz bingo with Xbox, with 830 positions eliminated at its Redmond, Washington headquarters. In July 2025, Microsoft announced another round of layoffs, cutting approximately 9,000 workers in its largest workforce discount in over two years. Blizzard president Mike Ybarra and chief design officer Allen Adham additionally resigned.
On October 7, Microsoft acquired Ally.io, a software service that measures corporations’ progress towards OKRs, planning to include it into its Viva family of worker expertise products. The public cloud computing platform offers access to quantum software program and quantum hardware together with trapped ion, impartial atom, and superconducting methods. This inquiry was a half of broader efforts by the U.S. authorities to implement guidelines on the power of main tech corporations. In November 2024, the Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) launched an investigation into Microsoft, focusing on potential antitrust violations related to its cloud computing, AI, and cybersecurity businesses.
The probe scrutinized Microsoft’s bundling of cloud services with merchandise like Office and safety instruments, as properly as its rising AI presence by way of its partnership with OpenAI. The Ecu Fee issued a statement of objections, alleging Microsoft’s practice since 2019 gave Groups an unfair market advantage and restricted interoperability with competing software. In June 2024, Microsoft faced a potential EU nice after regulators accused it of abusing market energy by bundling its Groups video-conferencing app with its Workplace 365 and Microsoft 365 software. Microsoft was the first firm to participate within the PRISM surveillance program, in accordance with leaked NSA paperwork obtained by The Guardian and The Washington Post in June 2013, and acknowledged by government officers following the leak. When the Inside Income Service audited these transactions, ProPublica reported that Microsoft aggressively fought again, including successfully lobbying Congress to alter the law to make it tougher for the company to conduct audits of large corporations. Dame Margaret Hodge, a Labour MP within the UK stated, « It is unsurprising – but nonetheless shocking – that massively wealthy world companies overtly, unashamedly and blatantly refuse to pay tax on the earnings they make in the countries the place they undertake business ».
Microsoft offers details about reported bugs in its software program to intelligence businesses of the Usa government, prior to the common public release of the fix. In May 2025, Microsoft introduced that it is laying off more than 6,000 workers, around three % of the corporate’s entire workforce. Microsoft is certainly one of only two U.S.-based companies that have a main credit rating of AAA. The announcement came a day after internet hosting a Sting live performance for 50 people, including Microsoft executives, in Davos, Switzerland.
If you are both a YouTube Premium and YouTube TV member, you can watch your favourite YouTube movies on YouTube TV ads-free, however ads will nonetheless seem on live and recorded TV. Criticism of Microsoft has adopted numerous elements of its merchandise and business practices, including surveillance of staff, « Velvet Sweatshop » practices, tax manipulation, and antitrust violations. Amy Coleman, Microsoft’s executive vice president and chief people officer, said the layoffs were not the end result of workers being replaced by AI, but acknowledged that AI is changing how work is done. Amid the layoffs, Microsoft also closed its office in Pakistan and laid off its workers there as a half of its transfer towards a software-as-a-service and AI working model. In June 2024, Microsoft announced it would be laying off 1,000 workers from the company’s blended reality and Azure cloud computing divisions.
In mid-2025, Microsoft’s Russian division, Microsoft Rus LLC, filed for bankruptcy after President Vladimir Putin stated that overseas companies providers should be throttled in Russia to make way for home software. The outage was traced again to a flawed replace of CrowdStrike’s cybersecurity software, which resulted in Microsoft methods crashing and inflicting disruptions across varied sectors. On July 19, a worldwide IT outage impacted Microsoft services, affecting companies, airways, and monetary institutions worldwide. Meanwhile, that month, the company introduced a subscription providing of artificial intelligence for small companies by way of Copilot Pro. However, the plan was short-lived, as Altman was subsequently reinstated as OpenAI’s CEO and Brockman rejoined the company amid pressure from OpenAI’s employees and traders on its board. The service contains Copilot, a GPT-4 primarily based large language model device to question and visualize data, write code, initiate simulations, and educate researchers.
- Among grant recipients from the Asia-Pacific area are the Sri Lankan IT company Fortude, the Thailand-based Vulcan Coalition, and the Indonesian group Kerjabilitas.
- In August 2018, Microsoft carried out a policy for all companies providing subcontractors to require 12 weeks of paid parental go away to each employee.
- Microsoft also confirmed that its Maia 200 AI accelerator, first revealed in January 2026, had entered production deployment in information centers in Iowa and Arizona, powering workloads including Microsoft 365 Copilot and OpenAI’s GPT-5.2 models.
- In mid-2025, Microsoft’s Russian division, Microsoft Rus LLC, filed for bankruptcy after President Vladimir Putin stated that international services providers must be throttled in Russia to make way for home software.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Microsoft’s president, Brad Smith, introduced that it had donated an preliminary batch of supplies, together with 15,000 safety goggles, infrared thermometers, medical caps, and protecting suits, to healthcare employees in Seattle, with additional help to come back. Dave Norris ran an inside joke campaign to keep away from wasting the old emblem, which was green, in all uppercase, and featured a fantastic letter O, nicknamed the blibbet, nevertheless it was discarded. Baker acknowledged « The new emblem, in Helvetica italic typeface, has a slash between the o and s to emphasize the « soft » a part of the name and convey motion and velocity ».