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Microsoft Rides Cloud to Higher Earnings

FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre at the E3 2017 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, US June 13, 2017. REUTERS/ Mike Blake
FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre at the E3 2017 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, US June 13, 2017. REUTERS/ Mike Blake
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Microsoft Rides Cloud to Higher Earnings

FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre at the E3 2017 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, US June 13, 2017. REUTERS/ Mike Blake
FILE PHOTO: The Microsoft logo is shown on the Microsoft Theatre at the E3 2017 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, US June 13, 2017. REUTERS/ Mike Blake

Microsoft on Tuesday said its profit in the recently ended quarter continued to soar as the pandemic boosted a trend toward business being taken care of in the internet cloud.

The US technology titan's profit rose to $13.9 billion, up 30 percent from the same quarter last year, according to earnings figures.

Revenue in the quarter climbed 12 percent to $37.2 billion.

"Demand for our cloud offerings drove a strong start to the fiscal year," said Microsoft chief financial officer Amy Hood.

Microsoft took in $15.2 billion in revenue from cloud computing offerings for businesses, up 31 percent from the same period last year, according to Hood.

Demand for software, services, and data storage hosted online at datacenters that had been steadily growing for years has rocketed during the pandemic as shopping, learning, work and more are tended to online due to the pandemic.

Businesses are under pressure to engage customers online or lose them, according to Microsoft.

"The next decade of economic performance for every business will be defined by the speed of their digital transformation," said Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella.

Revenue was also up from the company's Office suite of software; LinkedIn career-centric social network, and the Xbox video game unit.

The Microsoft Surface line of laptop computers also had a "blowout" quarter, with revenue up 37 percent, noted analyst Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy.

Microsoft "delivered big time by beating expectations," according to Moorhead.

"Enterprises are transitioning from Covid-19 triage to starting to renew their digital transformation plans with a focus on hybrid work," AFP quoted the analyst as saying, referring to employees staying connected to offices but not necessarily being there to get jobs done.

"Microsoft is taking advantage of this phenomenon."

The shift to the cloud and work-from-home appears to be "here to stay," with Microsoft positioned to benefit with its Azure computing platform and Office 365 online software, according to Wedbush analyst Dan Ives.

While quarterly earnings topped estimates, Microsoft shares slipped more than a percent on word the company expects to bring in less money than analysts expected in the current quarter.

Microsoft forecast revenue this quarter of between $39.5 billion and $40.4 billion. The Redmond, Washington based company also revealed that revenue from search ads dropped during the recently-ended quarter in a potential bad sign for Google.

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Technology

Report: SpaceX Competing to Produce Autonomous Drone Tech for Pentagon 

The SpaceX logo is seen in this illustration taken, March 10, 2025. (Reuters)
The SpaceX logo is seen in this illustration taken, March 10, 2025. (Reuters)
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Report: SpaceX Competing to Produce Autonomous Drone Tech for Pentagon 

The SpaceX logo is seen in this illustration taken, March 10, 2025. (Reuters)
The SpaceX logo is seen in this illustration taken, March 10, 2025. (Reuters)

Elon Musk's SpaceX and its wholly-owned subsidiary xAI are competing in a secret new Pentagon contest to produce voice-controlled, autonomous drone swarming technology, Bloomberg News reported on Monday, citing people familiar with the matter.

SpaceX, xAI and the Pentagon's defense innovation unit did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Reuters could not independently verify the report.

Texas-based SpaceX recently acquired xAI in a deal that combined Musk's major space and defense contractor with the billionaire entrepreneur's artificial intelligence startup. It occurred ahead of SpaceX's planned initial public offering this year.

Musk's companies are reportedly among a select few chosen to participate in the $100 million prize challenge initiated in January, according to the Bloomberg report.

The six-month competition aims to produce advanced swarming technology that can translate voice commands into digital instructions and run multiple drones, the report said.

Musk was among a group of AI and robotics researchers who wrote an open letter in 2015 that advocated a global ban on “offensive autonomous weapons,” arguing against making “new tools for killing people.”

The US also has been seeking safe and cost-effective ways to neutralize drones, particularly around airports and large sporting events - a concern that has become more urgent ahead of the FIFA World Cup and America250 anniversary celebrations this summer.

The US military, along with its allies, is now racing to deploy the so-called “loyal wingman” drones, an AI-powered aircraft designed to integrate with manned aircraft and anti-drone systems to neutralize enemy drones.

In June 2025, US President Donald Trump issued the Executive Order (EO) “Unleashing American Drone Dominance” which accelerated the development and commercialization of drone and AI technologies.

Technology

SVC Develops AI Intelligence Platform to Strengthen Private Capital Ecosystem

The platform offers customizable analytical dashboards that deliver frequent updates and predictive insights- SPA
The platform offers customizable analytical dashboards that deliver frequent updates and predictive insights- SPA
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SVC Develops AI Intelligence Platform to Strengthen Private Capital Ecosystem

The platform offers customizable analytical dashboards that deliver frequent updates and predictive insights- SPA
The platform offers customizable analytical dashboards that deliver frequent updates and predictive insights- SPA

Saudi Venture Capital Company (SVC) announced the launch of its proprietary intelligence platform, Aian, developed in-house using Saudi national expertise to enhance its institutional role in developing the Kingdom’s private capital ecosystem and supporting its mandate as a market maker guided by data-driven growth principles.

According to a press release issued by the SVC today, Aian is a custom-built AI-powered market intelligence capability that transforms SVC’s accumulated institutional expertise and detailed private market data into structured, actionable insights on market dynamics, sector evolution, and capital formation. The platform converts institutional memory into compounding intelligence, enabling decisions that integrate both current market signals and long-term historical trends, SPA reported.

Deputy CEO and Chief Investment Officer Nora Alsarhan stated that as Saudi Arabia’s private capital market expands, clarity, transparency, and data integrity become as critical as capital itself. She noted that Aian represents a new layer of national market infrastructure, strengthening institutional confidence, enabling evidence-based decision-making, and supporting sustainable growth.

By transforming data into actionable intelligence, she said, the platform reinforces the Kingdom’s position as a leading regional private capital hub under Vision 2030.

She added that market making extends beyond capital deployment to shaping the conditions under which capital flows efficiently, emphasizing that the next phase of market development will be driven by intelligence and analytical insight alongside investment.

Through Aian, SVC is building the knowledge backbone of Saudi Arabia’s private capital ecosystem, enabling clearer visibility, greater precision in decision-making, and capital formation guided by insight rather than assumption.

Chief Strategy Officer Athary Almubarak said that in private capital markets, access to reliable insight increasingly represents the primary constraint, particularly in emerging and fast-scaling markets where disclosures vary and institutional knowledge is fragmented.

She explained that for development-focused investment institutions, inconsistent data presents a structural challenge that directly impacts capital allocation efficiency and the ability to crowd in private investment at scale.

She noted that SVC was established to address such market frictions and that, as a government-backed investor with an explicit market-making mandate, its role extends beyond financing to building the enabling environment in which private capital can grow sustainably.

By integrating SVC’s proprietary portfolio data with selected external market sources, Aian enables continuous consolidation and validation of market activity, producing a dynamic representation of capital deployment over time rather than relying solely on static reporting.

The platform offers customizable analytical dashboards that deliver frequent updates and predictive insights, enabling SVC to identify priority market gaps, recalibrate capital allocation, design targeted ecosystem interventions, and anchor policy dialogue in evidence.

The release added that Aian also features predictive analytics capabilities that anticipate upcoming funding activity, including projected investment rounds and estimated ticket sizes. In addition, it incorporates institutional benchmarking tools that enable structured comparisons across peers, sectors, and interventions, supporting more precise, data-driven ecosystem development.

Technology

Job Threats, Rogue Bots: Five Hot Issues in AI

A Delhi police officer outside the venue of the 'India AI Impact Summit 2026'. Arun SANKAR / AFP
A Delhi police officer outside the venue of the 'India AI Impact Summit 2026'. Arun SANKAR / AFP
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Job Threats, Rogue Bots: Five Hot Issues in AI

A Delhi police officer outside the venue of the 'India AI Impact Summit 2026'. Arun SANKAR / AFP
A Delhi police officer outside the venue of the 'India AI Impact Summit 2026'. Arun SANKAR / AFP

As artificial intelligence evolves at a blistering pace, world leaders and thousands of other delegates will discuss how to handle the technology at the AI Impact Summit, which opens Monday in New Delhi.

Here are five big issues on the agenda:

Job loss fears

Generative AI threatens to disrupt myriad industries, from software development and factory work to music and the movies.

India -- with its large customer service and tech support sectors -- could be vulnerable, and shares in the country's outsourcing firms have plunged in recent days, partly due to advances in AI assistant tools.

"Automation, intelligent systems, and data-driven processes are increasingly taking over routine and repetitive tasks, reshaping traditional job structures," the summit's "human capital" working group says.

"While these developments can drive efficiency and innovation, they also risk displacing segments of the workforce," widening socio-economic divides, it warns.

Bad robots

The Delhi summit is the fourth in a series of international AI meetings. The first in 2023 was called the AI Safety Summit, and preventing real-world harm is still a key goal.

In the United States, families of people who have taken their own lives have sued OpenAI, accusing ChatGPT of having contributed to the suicides. The company says it has made efforts to strengthen its safeguards.

Elon Musk's Grok AI tool also recently sparked global outrage and bans in several countries over its ability to create sexualized deepfakes depicting real people, including children, in skimpy clothing.

Other concerns range from copyright violations to scammers using AI tools to produce perfectly spelled phishing emails.

Energy demands

Tech giants are spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure, building data centers packed with cutting-edge microchips, and also, in some cases, nuclear plants to power them.

The International Energy Agency projects that electricity consumption from data centers will double by 2030, fueled by the AI boom.

In 2024, data centers accounted for an estimated 1.5 percent of global electricity consumption, it says.

Alongside concerns over planet-warming carbon emissions are worries about water use to cool the data centers servers, which can lead to shortages on hot days.

Moves to regulate

In South Korea, a wide-ranging law regulating artificial intelligence took effect in January, requiring companies to tell users when products use generative AI.

Many countries are planning similar moves, despite a warning from US Vice President JD Vance last year against "excessive regulation" that could stifle innovation.

The European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act allows regulators to ban AI systems deemed to pose "unacceptable risks" to society.

That could include identifying people in real time in public spaces or evaluating criminal risk based on biometric data alone.

'Everyone dies'

More existential fears have also been expressed by AI insiders who believe the technology is marching towards so-called "Artificial General Intelligence", when machines' abilities match those of humans.

OpenAI and rival startup Anthropic have seen public resignations of staff members who have spoken out about the ethical implications of their technology.

Anthropic warned last week that its latest chatbot models could be nudged towards "knowingly supporting -- in small ways -- efforts toward chemical weapon development and other heinous crimes".

Researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, author of the 2025 book "If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies: Why Superhuman AI Would Kill Us All" has also compared AI to the development of nuclear weapons.