Microsoft said on February 24, 2026 that it surpassed its 2025 target of extending internet access to 250 million people, reaching over 299 million globally. The company also announced a Starlink collaboration and a shift toward adoption-focused AI-economy participation.
Microsoft announced on February 17, 2026 that it will invest an additional $50 billion over five years to reduce AI inequality across the Global South. The plan combines infrastructure expansion, ecosystem development, and workforce skilling.
A new report from Windows Central reveals that former Xbox President Sarah Bond's strategic direction—particularly the "This is an Xbox" marketing campaign—generated significant backlash among Xbox employees, who reportedly felt offended and relieved when she and Phil Spencer departed.
Anthropic launched Claude in PowerPoint, a Microsoft 365 add-in that generates and edits slides from natural language prompts while respecting existing themes. Available as a research preview for Pro, Max, Team, and Enterprise subscribers.
OpenAI is close to finalizing a record-breaking $100 billion funding round backed by Amazon, SoftBank, NVIDIA, and Microsoft, pushing its valuation above $850 billion in the largest AI startup financing in history.
Sarah Bond, the outgoing Xbox president, has spoken publicly for the first time since news of her departure alongside Phil Spencer's retirement. She expressed pride in her time leading Xbox.
Playground Games and Microsoft have released a 'Discover Japan' Biomes Showcase for Forza Horizon 6, giving players a detailed look at the game's diverse Japanese environments.
After 38 years at Microsoft and 12 years leading Xbox, CEO Phil Spencer is retiring. Xbox President Sarah Bond is also departing, and AI executive Asha Sharma will take over as the new Microsoft Gaming CEO.
Microsoft announced Maia 200 (codenamed Braga) on 2026-01-26 as its second-generation in-house AI accelerator. The company says selected Copilot and Azure AI workloads show up to 1.7x performance versus Maia 100.
Microsoft announced on January 5, 2026 that it is acquiring Osmos, an agentic AI data engineering platform. The company says the move is intended to reduce manual data-prep overhead and extend Microsoft Fabric’s OneLake-centered data workflow automation.
Microsoft AI Safety team discovered GRP-Obliteration, an attack that disables safety alignment across 15 major LLMs with a single prompt. GPT-OSS-20B's attack success rate jumped from 13% to 93%.