Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology company that produces computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and associated services.
According to CNBC, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated during the latest earnings conference call that Apple's hybrid AI strategy—where some AI tasks run locally on-device and complex tasks are processed via Google Cloud—is a "competitive weapon", distinct from the data center investments of tech giants like Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon, which often exceed $100 billion. Apple's capital expenditure in the second fiscal quarter was only $2.46 billion, lower than the market expectation of $3.44 billion. Cook also revealed that Apple plans to make AI a core selling point for iCloud+ subscription upgrades, offering paid expansion options for users with higher AI usage, but the specific pricing plan has not been finalized yet.
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during the company's second-quarter earnings call, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg stated that Meta currently does not have a business selling computing power to customers, but such offerings are in the plans. He indicated that a significant portion of Meta's computing power will be used for training AI models, supporting agent products, and developing core businesses, while the company also anticipates expanding services to large enterprise clients.Both Google and Meta have slightly raised their capital expenditure expectations for this year. Google stated that related spending could increase further in 2027, while Microsoft maintained its capital expenditure forecast. Google's cash flow turned negative for the first time in the second quarter, and Meta's cash flow decreased by 91% compared to the same period last year.Microsoft CFO Amy Hood noted that customer demand for its cloud business still exceeds available capacity. Google said last week that it will purchase more third-party computing power while building more internal capacity to meet customer needs.Google CEO Sundar Pichai stated that the primary objective for Google in using its self-developed tensor processing units (TPUs) is to ensure the allocation of necessary resources for the development of AGI frontiers. Google is working with partners to deploy TPUs in other data centers to unlock more capacity.
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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella issued a warning on July 29, 2026 (US time) regarding the incident in which an AI model under OpenAI "went out of control" and intruded into other companies' systems, emphasizing "should not rely on any single AI model" and calling on the industry to prioritize the diversification and resilience building of AI systems.
According to TNW, AI security operations startup Mate Security announced the completion of a $35 million Series A funding round led by Canaan Partners, with participation from Insight Partners, Team8, and Microsoft's venture fund M12, bringing total funding to over $50 million. This comes less than a year after the company emerged from stealth mode. Mate Security was founded by former employees of Wiz and Microsoft. Its core product is the "Security Context Graph," which empowers AI security agents with business context by building an organizational knowledge layer, enabling them to make judgments based on actual enterprise operational conditions when handling alerts, effectively reducing false positive rates.
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According to Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs Group is gauging investor appetite for a potential $5.4 billion debt issuance plan, with the proceeds to be used to support the QTS data center project under Blackstone tied to Microsoft. The debt structure includes approximately $4.9 billion in secured bonds and approximately $500 million in term loans. Affected by recent sell-offs in AI-related debt, the issuance timing is still under discussion, and the plan remains uncertain.
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According to Decrypt, Microsoft is silently pushing the new OneDrive Photos app to some Windows 11 users via Windows Update or OneDrive client updates. The app can automatically index local photo libraries, supports natural language AI search and optical character recognition, and includes an optional face grouping feature. Since face data is considered biometric information in some regions, this feature requires users to actively enable it. Notably, the app currently cannot be uninstalled separately; users who wish to remove it must fully uninstall OneDrive.
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Odaily Microsoft (MSFT.O) reported strong growth in its cloud business, with an increase in the number of AI paying users. Meanwhile, investors remain focused on whether the tech giant's spending on data centers will yield returns. Microsoft's fourth-quarter earnings per share were $4.81, up from $3.65 in the same period last year and above Wall Street's estimate of $4.24. Quarterly revenue reached $90 billion, surpassing the expected $87.6 billion, representing an 18% year-over-year increase. Azure remains one of the most closely watched metrics by investors, serving as a bellwether for overall AI demand. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated: "Azure revenue surpassed $100 billion for the first time, and paid seats for Microsoft 365 Copilot exceeded 30 million, reflecting that customers trust us to power their AI transformation." Microsoft's Azure cloud business generated $39.3 billion in revenue in the fourth fiscal quarter, with a growth rate of 43%, exceeding the expected 40% growth. Microsoft's stock rose as much as 4% in after-hours trading. So far this year, Microsoft's stock has accumulated a decline of about 18%. (Jin Shi)
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According to Yonhap News, Microsoft co-founder and Gates Foundation Chair Bill Gates is advancing plans to visit South Korea as early as next month and is coordinating schedules for a meeting with South Korean Prime Minister Han Duk-soo, with specific visit dates and discussion content yet to be determined. Last August, Gates visited South Korea and met successively with major corporate leaders including Chey Tae-won (SK Group), Jung Ki-sun (HD Hyundai), and Lee Jae-yong (Samsung Electronics) to discuss cooperation in AI, biotechnology, and next-generation nuclear power. If this visit to South Korea proceeds, the above topics are expected to continue as core agenda items. Gates also serves as the founder and chairman of the board of next-generation nuclear power enterprise TerraPower. The company is developing a "sodium" reactor small modular reactor (SMR) based on a molten salt energy storage system, which has received widespread industry attention for its adjustable power output and high safety.
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According to Bloomberg, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced an investigation into Microsoft to verify whether, after bundling Copilot AI features into the Microsoft 365 suite (including apps such as Word, Excel, Outlook, etc.) and raising prices, it fully disclosed relevant subscription price change information to users. Regulators are concerned that consumers may be forced to pay higher fees without clear notification.
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According to Nikkei XTECH, Microsoft has developed a new system to address cyberattacks involving autonomous AI, using three types of AI agents to support the process from vulnerability identification to remediation. Microsoft will also launch its first self-developed AI model for cyber defense.
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According to Bloomberg, Microsoft and Meta will release their earnings reports after the US market closes on Wednesday. The market focus is not on revenue growth, but rather on the two companies' continuously rising AI capital expenditures and shrinking cash reserves. Previously, Alphabet's stock price still recorded the largest single-day drop in over a year despite announcing better-than-expected results, as it experienced negative cash flow for the first time since its listing due to a surge in capital expenditures. Analysts point out that the uncertainty surrounding returns on AI investments by large tech companies is accelerating the erosion of Wall Street's patience, and Microsoft and Meta's earnings reports may become a new round of stress tests for market sentiment.
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After market close on July 29, US Eastern Time, Microsoft (MSFT) and Meta (META) will release their Q2 2026 earnings reports simultaneously. The core market suspense is consistent: When will the massive AI capital expenditures yield returns? Bybit Academy brings you a preview of this earnings season feast: (1) Microsoft: Focus on whether Azure Cloud growth can offset continuously rising AI infrastructure investment, implied volatility 6.5%; (2) Meta: Capital expenditure guidance is the biggest highlight, whether the gap between AI investment and ad monetization can narrow, implied volatility 7.3%. Volatility for both may amplify today; the earnings trading window is open. Bybit US Stock Earnings Season Event Reminder: Currently in a limited-time trading task window period (7/21–7/30), trading META stock contracts earns extra points, independent from TSLA, GOOGL, AAPL, and AMZN tasks, and can be completed separately. Meanwhile, you can bet on the next-day Top Gainer among 10 popular US stocks including META in the "Top Gainer" daily prediction; those who bet correctly will proportionally share the points pool of those who bet incorrectly. This US stock earnings season lasts until August 30, with a million prize pool waiting to be unlocked, plus a Tesla Cybertruck grand prize.
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According to TechFlow Research, Morgan Stanley released a research report on July 27, quantifying for the first time the Incremental Return on Invested Capital (ROIC) of Generative AI investments. The report constructed three estimation frameworks: the ROIC for hyperscale cloud service providers' GPU leasing business is approximately 31%, the ROIC for proprietary infrastructure model API business is approximately 46%, and the ROIC for third-party compute API business is approximately 25%. Under base case assumptions, a single 1 gigawatt (GW) data center is configured with approximately 410,000 NVIDIA GB300 GPUs, with a utilization rate of 75% and an hourly leasing price of $8.5. The combined capital expenditure of the three major cloud giants is expected to exceed $1.4 trillion. Morgan Stanley maintains an Overweight rating on Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google. The report points out that as AI moves from the training phase to the inference phase, demand for GPU compute power will continue to grow. Providers with self-built compute infrastructure will achieve considerable profits by leveraging their pricing power in an ecosystem where compute is scarce. If Morgan Stanley's calculations hold true, the hundreds of billions of dollars in AI capital expenditure will shift from being perceived as "costs" to "growth assets".
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Chinese AI startup Moonshot AI will release the model weights of its high-performance model, Kimi K3. Developers can download the model, modify it for various purposes, and run it in their own data centers or cloud environments.Kimi K3 boasts 2.8 trillion parameters and a 1 million token context window, enabling it to process large-scale documents and codebases in a single pass. Moonshot AI plans to later publish a technical report detailing the model's architecture, training methodology, and performance evaluation results.Following the release of Kimi K3, Moonshot AI's daily revenue is reported to have increased by at least 6 times. The company is reportedly advancing a new round of fundraising at a $50 billion valuation and is considering a Hong Kong listing as early as this year.According to Bloomberg Intelligence, following the release of Kimi K3 and Z.AI's GLM-5.2, the share of Chinese open-weight models in overall token usage has risen to 68%. Services like AWS Bedrock, Microsoft Azure Foundry, and Google Vertex AI currently do not offer Chinese open-weight models such as Kimi K3 and GLM-5.2.
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: Julian Schrittwieser, a technical staff member at Anthropic, recently posted on social media, joking about the shift in attitude some tech giants have shown towards "open source" in recent years. He expressed anticipation for Nvidia and Microsoft to further open up their core technologies, stating: "It's great to see Jensen Huang become a supporter of open source. Looking forward to the open-source release of CUDA and GPU drivers. Also looking forward to Satya Nadella supporting open source, hoping to see Windows and Microsoft Office open-sourced in the future."Julian Schrittwieser also responded to external speculations that he opposes open weight models, indicating that this interpretation is inaccurate. He believes that open models can actually play an important role in many scenarios. However, Schrittwieser pointed out that what is interesting is that some companies, which have long been very cautious or even opposed to open source in the past, are now rapidly shifting towards supporting open ecosystems.In recent years, with the intensification of competition in artificial intelligence, open-source models, open weights, and developer ecosystems have become critical areas of competition in the tech industry. Companies including Nvidia and Microsoft have continuously emphasized their support for open ecosystems. However, the definition of "open" remains controversial within the industry—some companies open up model interfaces, toolchains, or ecosystems, while their core commercial assets remain closed source.Julian Schrittwieser's remarks have also sparked discussion, focusing on whether the "selective open sourcing" promoted by tech giants represents genuine openness or a new ecological competitive strategy.
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NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang has published his first post on X, sharing an open letter titled "Open Weight and American AI Leadership," jointly signed by more than 20 technology companies and institutions, including NVIDIA.The open letter argues that open-weight models can expand economic access to AI, enhance market competition, and grant users more control. Signatories include Meta, Microsoft, Andreessen Horowitz, Hugging Face, IBM, Mistral AI, Palantir, Perplexity, Mozilla, Y Combinator, among others.The letter states that while open-weight models carry risks, they should not be restricted through bans. Instead, openness should be leveraged to advance AI safety and cybersecurity capabilities. Huang noted: "The world needs cutting-edge closed-source models, and it also needs cutting-edge open models."
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the U.S. Pentagon has announced the signing of an enterprise software agreement with Oracle valued at nearly $7 billion, with a maximum term of 10 years. This agreement consolidates the Department of Defense's existing on-premise software licenses under a unified contract to reduce costs associated with fragmented procurement. Negotiated by the Department of the Navy, the agreement has a five-year base period and includes a five-year renewal option, covering the U.S. Department of Defense, the Coast Guard, and intelligence agencies. Previously, in May of this year, the Pentagon signed a similar software consolidation agreement with Microsoft valued at $96.9 billion over five years. (Reuters)
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According to TechFlow Research, Morgan Stanley released a weekly US stock strategy report on July 20. The report pointed out that the trend of market breadth expansion continues, and the momentum trading risks in the semiconductor sector have not yet been fully released. The silver stock price analogy model shows that semiconductors may have about 15% downside potential in the short term, and earnings revision breadth has retreated from historical extremes. Over the past two months, the consumer durables and transportation sectors outperformed the S&P 500 by approximately 12 percentage points respectively, and the equal-weight index continues to outperform the market-cap weighted index. In terms of allocation, Morgan Stanley continues to recommend overweighting cloud providers (Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon) and underweighting semiconductors within the technology sector. The equal-weighted P/E ratio of the four major giants has fallen back to 21 times. Consumer durables and transportation are the clearest directions for capital inflows, with the earnings revision breadth of the transportation sector reaching the strongest level since 2021. Market style is gradually shifting towards quality factors, with earnings revision breadth for high gross margin and high sales stability factors continuing to strengthen. The S&P 500 year-end target is 8,000 points, with 7,000 points being a key technical support level.
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According to Protos, AI shopping agent developer ORO stated that an employee was tricked by an attacker disguised as a meeting contact into installing a Microsoft Teams extension containing malicious code, ultimately resulting in the theft of approximately $630,000 worth of crypto assets. ORO stated that the attackers likely originated from the North Korea-backed hacker group Sapphire Sleet.
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: Arcus, a decentralized exchange supported by Robinhood, launched tokenized stocks and perpetual futures on the Robinhood Chain on Tuesday. Arcus is built by the team behind the decentralized exchange dYdX and is supported by Robinhood Crypto. Arcus previously launched its spot market on July 1st when the Robinhood Chain went live. The platform offers over 95 stock tokens, perpetual markets, and crypto assets via self-custodial trading accounts, using USDG, a stablecoin issued by Paxos, as the primary collateral and settlement asset. The tokens launched on Arcus include stock tokens for major US companies such as Nvidia, Tesla, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Amazon, as well as perpetual markets linked to stocks, ETFs, commodities, indices, and crypto assets. Arcus stated that its stock tokens are not available in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and other restricted jurisdictions. The platform utilizes a self-custody model, allowing users to retain control of their assets and connect self-custodial wallets such as MetaMask, Ledger, and WalletConnect.
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