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Microsoft's Cloud Outlook Knocks Shares, Meta Rises on AI Payoff Signs

Pedestrians walk past a Microsoft Experience Center, following a global IT outage, in New York City, US July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Kent J. Edwards/File Photo
Pedestrians walk past a Microsoft Experience Center, following a global IT outage, in New York City, US July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Kent J. Edwards/File Photo
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Microsoft's Cloud Outlook Knocks Shares, Meta Rises on AI Payoff Signs

Pedestrians walk past a Microsoft Experience Center, following a global IT outage, in New York City, US July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Kent J. Edwards/File Photo
Pedestrians walk past a Microsoft Experience Center, following a global IT outage, in New York City, US July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Kent J. Edwards/File Photo

Investors punished Microsoft with a 6% share drop on Thursday as hefty AI bets failed to drive a big increase in its cloud revenue, while Meta rose 4% after CEO Mark Zuckerberg assured Wall Street about growth with promises of a "really big year".

The chief executives of both the companies defended their heavy investments on artificial intelligence on Wednesday, days after Chinese upstart DeepSeek unveiled a breakthrough in cheap AI that shook the technology industry.

But while Meta has consistently showed strong ad revenues - a move that "easily justifies" its investments according to Evercore analyst Mark Mahaney - Microsoft's key cloud business Azure has been slowing down, Reuters reported.

The Windows maker missed market estimates for quarterly revenue growth at Azure and gave a third-quarter forecast for the business that was below expectations, even after it promised a rebound for the unit in the second half of its fiscal year.

"The second-half re-acceleration story for Azure is not playing out," Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow said.

"The company overly focused on AI workloads at the expense of core Azure. It will take time to fix this, which means the Azure growth acceleration the market had been hoping for has to wait for a little longer."

For Facebook-parent Meta, a better-than-expected 21% jump in revenue helped ease investor fears around Zuckerberg's plans to spend as much as $65 billion this year on AI, even as its first-quarter forecast was muted.

"Nobody is more bulled up on AI than Meta. And Meta might have more benefits to show from AI than anyone," Rosenblatt analyst Barton Crockett wrote.

At least 15 brokerages raised their price targets on Meta, which has a 12-month forward price-to-earnings ratio of about 26.22. The stock jumped 65% last year, the biggest gain among Big Tech peers. The company looked set to add more than $80 billion to its market value on Thursday.

"Meta's ability to use AI to sustainably drive both engagement and pricing growth is a rarity in its (and the industry's) history," MoffettNathanson analysts said.

Microsoft was on track to erase about $182 billion off its market cap. About four brokerages trimmed their price targets on the stock, which has lagged its peers with just a 12% gain last year.

Microsoft "did not recommit to (its Azure second-half outlook) the same way that it did 90 days ago. The Azure-acceleration story has been hit by shrapnel and is losing altitude," J.P. Morgan analyst Mark Murphy said.

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Technology

New Process for Stable, Long-Lasting Batteries

The image shows a test cell used to fabricate and test the all-solid-state battery developed at PSI. (Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Mahir Dzambegovic) 
The image shows a test cell used to fabricate and test the all-solid-state battery developed at PSI. (Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Mahir Dzambegovic) 
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New Process for Stable, Long-Lasting Batteries

The image shows a test cell used to fabricate and test the all-solid-state battery developed at PSI. (Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Mahir Dzambegovic) 
The image shows a test cell used to fabricate and test the all-solid-state battery developed at PSI. (Paul Scherrer Institute PSI/Mahir Dzambegovic) 

Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI have achieved a breakthrough on the path to practical application of lithium metal all-solid-state batteries.

The team expects the next generation of batteries to store more energy, are safer to operate, and charge faster than conventional lithium-ion batteries.

The team has reported these results in the journal Advanced Science.

All-solid-state batteries are considered a promising solution for electromobility, mobile electronics, and stationary energy storage – in part because they do not require flammable liquid electrolytes and therefore are inherently safer than conventional lithium-ion batteries.

Two key problems, however, stand in the way of market readiness: On the one hand, the formation of lithium dendrites at the anode remains a critical point.

On the other hand, an electrochemical instability – at the interface between the lithium metal anode and the solid electrolyte – can impair the battery’s long-term performance and reliability.

To overcome these two obstacles, the team led by Mario El Kazzi, head of the Battery Materials and Diagnostics group at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, developed a new production process:

“We combined two approaches that, together, both densify the electrolyte and stabilize the interface with the lithium,” the scientist explained.

Central to the PSI study is the argyrodite type LPSCl, a sulphide-based solid electrolyte made of lithium, phosphorus, and sulphur. The mineral exhibits high lithium-ion conductivity, enabling rapid ion transport within the battery – a crucial prerequisite for high performance and efficient charging processes.

To densify argyrodite into a homogeneous electrolyte, El Kazzi and his team did incorporate the temperature factor, but in a more careful way: Instead of the classic sintering process, they chose a gentler approach in which the mineral was compressed under moderate pressure and at a moderate temperature of only about 80 degrees Celsius.

The result is a compact, dense microstructure resistant to the penetration of lithium dendrites. Already, in this form, the solid electrolyte is ideally suited for rapid lithium-ion transport.

To ensure reliable operation even at high current densities, such as those encountered during rapid charging and discharging, the all-solid-state cell required further modification.

For this purpose, a coating of lithium fluoride (LiF), only 65 nanometres thick, was evaporated under vacuum and applied uniformly to the lithium surface – serving as a ultra-thin passivation layer at the interface between the anode and the solid electrolyte.

In laboratory tests with button cells, the battery demonstrated extraordinary performance under demanding conditions.

“Its cycle stability at high voltage was remarkable,” said doctoral candidate Jinsong Zhang, lead author of the study.

After 1,500 charge and discharge cycles, the cell still retained approximately 75% of its original capacity.

This means that three-quarters of the lithium ions were still migrating from the cathode to the anode. “An outstanding result. These values are among the best reported to date.”

Zhang therefore sees a good chance that all-solid-state batteries could soon surpass conventional lithium-ion batteries with liquid electrolyte in terms of energy density and durability.

Thus El Kazzi and his team have demonstrated for the first time that the combination of solid electrolyte mild sintering and a thin passivation layer on lithium anode effectively suppresses both dendrite formation and interfacial instability.

This combined solution marks an important advance for all-solid-state battery research – not least because it offers ecological and economic advantages: Due to the low temperatures, the process saves energy and therefore costs.

“Our approach is a practical solution for the industrial production of argyrodite-based all-solid-state batteries,” said El Kazzi. “A few more adjustments – and we could get started.”

Technology

Meta Urges Australia to Change Teen Social Media Ban

Meta has called for Australia's social media for under-16s to target app stores. Saeed KHAN / AFP
Meta has called for Australia's social media for under-16s to target app stores. Saeed KHAN / AFP
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Meta Urges Australia to Change Teen Social Media Ban

Meta has called for Australia's social media for under-16s to target app stores. Saeed KHAN / AFP
Meta has called for Australia's social media for under-16s to target app stores. Saeed KHAN / AFP

Tech giant Meta urged Australia on Monday to rethink its world-first social media ban for under-16s, while reporting that it has blocked more than 544,000 accounts under the new law.

Australia has required big platforms including Meta, TikTok and YouTube to stop underage users from holding accounts since the legislation came into force on December 10 last year.

Companies face fines of Aus $49.5 million (US$33 million) if they fail to take "reasonable steps" to comply.

Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg's Meta said it had removed 331,000 underage accounts from Instagram, 173,000 from Facebook, and 40,000 from Threads in the week to December 11.

The company said it was committed to complying with the law.

"That said, we call on the Australian government to engage with industry constructively to find a better way forward, such as incentivizing all of industry to raise the standard in providing safe, privacy-preserving, age appropriate experiences online, instead of blanket bans," it said in statement.

Meta renewed an earlier call for app stores to be required to verify people's ages and get parental approval before under-16s can download an app.

This was the only way to avoid a "whack-a-mole" race to stop teens migrating to new apps to avoid the ban, the company said.

The government said it was holding social media companies to account for the harm they cause young Australians.

"Platforms like Meta collect a huge amount of data on their users for commercial purposes. They can and must use that information to comply with Australian law and ensure people under 16 are not on their platforms," a government spokesperson said.

Meta said parents and experts were worried about the ban isolating young people from online communities, and driving some to less regulated apps and darker corners of the internet.

Initial impacts of the legislation "suggest it is not meeting its objectives of increasing the safety and well-being of young Australians", it said.

While raising concern over the lack of an industry standard for determining age online, Meta said its compliance with the Australian law would be a "multilayered process".

Since the ban, the California-based firm said it had helped found the OpenAge Initiative, a non-profit group that has launched age-verification tools called AgeKeys to be used with participating platforms.

Technology

China Is Closing in on US Technology Lead Despite Constraints, AI Researchers Say

Visitors look at robots on display at robotics company Unitree's first retail store in Beijing in January 9, 2026. (AFP)
Visitors look at robots on display at robotics company Unitree's first retail store in Beijing in January 9, 2026. (AFP)
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China Is Closing in on US Technology Lead Despite Constraints, AI Researchers Say

Visitors look at robots on display at robotics company Unitree's first retail store in Beijing in January 9, 2026. (AFP)
Visitors look at robots on display at robotics company Unitree's first retail store in Beijing in January 9, 2026. (AFP)

China can narrow its technological gap with the US driven by growing risk-taking and innovation, though the lack of advanced chipmaking tools is hobbling the sector, the country's leading artificial intelligence researchers said on Saturday.

China's so-called "AI tiger" startups MiniMax and Zhipu AI had strong debuts on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange this week, reflecting growing confidence in the sector as Beijing fast-tracks AI and chip listings to bolster domestic alternatives to advanced US technology.

Yao Shunyu, a former senior researcher at ChatGPT maker OpenAI ‌who was named ‌technology giant Tencent's chief AI scientist in December, ‌said ⁠there was a ‌high likelihood of a Chinese firm becoming the world's leading AI company in the next three to five years but said the lack of advanced chipmaking machines was the main technical hurdle.

"Currently, we have a significant advantage in electricity and infrastructure. The main bottlenecks are production capacity, including lithography machines, and the software ecosystem," Yao said at an AI conference in Beijing.

China has completed a working prototype of an extreme-ultraviolet lithography ⁠machine potentially capable of producing cutting-edge semiconductor chips that rival the West's, Reuters reported last month. However, the ‌machine has not yet produced working chips and may ‍not do so until 2030, people with ‍knowledge of the matter told Reuters.

MIND THE INVESTMENT GAP

Yao and other ‍Chinese industry leaders at the Beijing conference on Saturday also acknowledged that the US maintains an advantage in computing power due to its hefty investments in infrastructure.

"The US computer infrastructure is likely one to two orders of magnitude larger than ours. But I see that whether it's OpenAI or other platforms, they're investing heavily in next-generation research," said Lin Junyang, technical lead for Alibaba's flagship Qwen large language model.

"We, ⁠on the other hand, are relatively strapped for cash; delivery alone likely consumes the majority of our computer infrastructure," Lin said during a panel discussion at the AGI-Next Frontier Summit held by the Beijing Key Laboratory of Foundational Models at Tsinghua University.

Lin said China's limited resources have spurred its researchers to be innovative, particularly through algorithm-hardware co-design, which enables AI firms to run large models on smaller, inexpensive hardware.

Tang Jie, founder of Zhipu AI which raised HK$4.35 billion in its IPO, also highlighted the willingness of younger Chinese AI entrepreneurs to embrace high-risk ventures - a trait traditionally associated with Silicon Valley - as a positive development.

"I think if we can improve this environment, ‌allowing more time for these risk-taking, intelligent individuals to engage in innovative endeavors ... this is something our government and the country can help improve," said Tang.