Microsoft

According to insiders, Microsoft and other tech firms have lobbied the U.S. government to stop plans for an import ban on optical transceivers from China. Such a ban would slow the expansion of AI data centers and severely affect Microsoft’s U.S. build-out plans, because Chinese suppliers dominate two-thirds of the global market and U.S. manufacturers could not replace them in the short term. The government is considering a compromise that would target only new 3.2-terabit transceivers and give U.S. producers until 2029 to expand capacity. » More on faz.net

Microsoft is rolling out Automatic Super Resolution (Auto SR) to the Xbox Ally X, Xbox Ally X20 and select Windows Copilot Plus PCs. Auto SR now works undocked and on battery and adds support for games running at 1080p, though Microsoft warns handheld/1080p performance may be reduced. A new Performance mode (up to 120fps) and Auto HDR compatibility will arrive via Windows updates. » More on theverge.com

Microsoft is ending a lease with Oracle for compute capacity rented in 2023 that used older Nvidia chips, saying they no longer meet current requirements. The company is also questioning other contracts and did not exercise expansion options, for example at Nscale in Texas, because of construction and commissioning delays. At the same time, Microsoft plans to shift more AI inference to its own Maia accelerators, but expects full independence from Nvidia only in the long term. » More on heise.de

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says AI is the company's future and imagines the roughly 200,000 employees could use up to 20 million AI agents, while he personally runs up to 100 AI sessions in parallel. Such agents must be fully inspectable and assessable; Microsoft offers Agent 365 as a solution to extend tools like Defender and Entra to AI agents, which costs per user. Nadella stresses the need to convince society and workers of the technology's benefits and raises questions about new jobs, pay and company formation in the AI era. » More on golem.de

Buyers are returning to US markets after heavy losses, with a few heavily weighted tech companies pushing the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 higher. Market participants view the rally more as short-covering and bargain hunting than a trend reversal, especially as robust economic data and higher yields could prompt the Fed to take further rate steps in December. Microsoft is ending an agreement to rent AI compute capacity from Oracle and is assessing large-scale cloud partnerships for their usefulness, while investors are increasingly demanding tangible returns from AI investments. » More on deraktionaer.de