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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

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.