Microsoft 365 Down for Thousands of Users, Downdetector Shows

General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
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Microsoft 365 Down for Thousands of Users, Downdetector Shows

General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo
General view of Microsoft Corporation headquarters at Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris, France, April 18, 2016. REUTERS/Charles Platiau/File Photo

Microsoft's (MSFT.O), suite of productivity software was down for more than 16,000 users on Thursday, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

This comes nearly two months after a faulty software update from cybersecurity services provider CrowdStrike (CRWD.O), affected nearly 8.5 million Windows devices, crippling operations across industries ranging from airlines and banks to healthcare, according to Reuters.

"We're investigating an issue where users may be unable to access multiple Microsoft 365 services," the Windows parent said in a post on X.

Microsoft did not immediately respond to queries on the nature and cause of the outage and when it expects a recovery, but its Azure cloud platform said on X it was probing customer reports of a potential issue connecting Microsoft's services from AT&T (T.N), networks.

The telecom operator did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After the incident reports peaked at around 23,000 for Microsoft 365, there were signs of the issues ebbing. Some users on social media said Microsoft's services were up and running.

About 4,000 users reported issues with AT&T services and more than 16,500 said they had trouble accessing Microsoft's 365 products, as of 9:12 A.M. ET, according to Downdetector, which tracks outages by collating status reports from a number of sources, including user-submitted errors on its platform.



Huawei's AI Lab Denies that One of its Pangu Models Copied Alibaba's Qwen

FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
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Huawei's AI Lab Denies that One of its Pangu Models Copied Alibaba's Qwen

FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo
FILE PHOTO: Huawei logo is seen during Munich Auto Show, IAA Mobility 2021 in Munich, Germany, September 8, 2021. REUTERS/Wolfgang Rattay/File Photo

Huawei's artificial intelligence research division has rejected claims that a version of its Pangu Pro large language model has copied elements from an Alibaba model, saying that it was independently developed and trained.

The division, called Noah Ark Lab, issued the statement on Saturday, a day after an entity called HonestAGI posted an English-language paper on code-sharing platform Github, saying Huawei's Pangu Pro Moe (Mixture of Experts) model showed "extraordinary correlation" with Alibaba's Qwen 2.5 14B.

This suggests that Huawei's model was derived through "upcycling" and was not trained from scratch, the paper said, prompting widespread discussion in AI circles online and in Chinese tech-focused media.

According to Reuters, the paper added that its findings indicated potential copyright violation, the fabrication of information in technical reports and false claims about Huawei's investment in training the model.

Noah Ark Lab said in its statement that the model was "not based on incremental training of other manufacturers' models" and that it had "made key innovations in architecture design and technical features." It is the first large-scale model built entirely on Huawei's Ascend chips, it added.

It also said that its development team had strictly adhered to open-source license requirements for any third-party code used, without elaborating which open-source models it took reference from.

Alibaba did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Reuters was unable to contact HonestAGI or learn who is behind the entity.

The release of Chinese startup DeepSeek's open-source model R1 in January this year shocked Silicon Valley with its low cost and sparked intense competition between China's tech giants to offer competitive products.

Qwen 2.5-14B was released in May 2024 and is one of Alibaba's small-sized Qwen 2.5 model family which can be deployed on PC and smartphones.

While Huawei entered the large language model arena early with its original Pangu release in 2021, it has since been perceived as lagging behind rivals. It open-sourced its Pangu Pro Moe models on Chinese developer platform GitCode in late June, seeking to boost the adoption of its AI tech by providing free access to developers.

While Qwen is more consumer-facing and has chatbot services like ChatGPT, Huawei's Pangu models tend to be more used in government as well as the finance and manufacturing sectors.