Microsoft Corporation

Nvidia agreed to invest in AI lab Nous Research to support both open-weight and proprietary model development, while Microsoft introduced the Surface Laptop Ultra featuring Nvidia's new RTX Spark processor for on-device AI workloads. The RTX Spark chip brings Nvidia's AI-focused graphics hardware into thinner consumer and enterprise laptops beyond data center servers. Nvidia, a US-based semiconductor group with a market value of about $5.6 trillion, is stretching its AI reach from hyperscale facilities into consumer and enterprise hardware. The company is putting capital behind Nous Research so that whether enterprises adopt open-weight assistants like Hermes Agent or closed models, they are more likely to run on Nvidia hardware and software. Near-term checks include how many OEMs follow Microsoft in shipping RTX Spark based laptops and whether Nvidia discloses concrete Nous related deployments into enterprise workflows, with updates through 2027 on agent safety platform adoption and the US$1b super intelligence commitment.

British AI data centre company Nscale stripped references to its relationship with Chinese technology giant Bytedance from official filings ahead of a planned $35bn public listing on Wall Street. Nscale, which counts Sir Nick Clegg and former Meta executive Sheryl Sandberg as directors and is backed by Nvidia, initially disclosed the Bytedance deal in a confidential document submitted to US regulators earlier this year, including a February filing stating that Bytedance was its largest customer for the year ended December 31, 2025. That filing was for DSNS Holdings, a holding company later renamed Nscale, and reported that Bytedance was the primary customer at a Norwegian data centre where it rents access to powerful Nvidia AI chips. References to Bytedance were removed from all of Nscale's later draft submissions and from its final 192-page prospectus published in September, which makes no mention of the company; the name is understood to have been removed for commercial confidentiality reasons, and Bytedance is no longer Nscale's biggest customer after the company signed major deals with Microsoft and Anthropic. The disclosures could draw fresh scrutiny, as US officials have sought to block China from accessing Nvidia's most powerful AI chips on national security grounds, and Nscale's February filing warned that the proposed Remote Access Security Act could restrict its ability to provide remote access to such customers. Nscale declined to comment, and Bytedance was contacted for comment.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on Friday unveiled Microsoft-Decision-1, a new fast decision-making artificial intelligence model. Nadella said in a post on X that the model delivers top performance on structured decision tasks, outperforming both LLMs and other decision models in latency and quality, and that Microsoft is already testing it across the company for everything from incident response and quality control to scientific discovery. Microsoft said in a blog post that the model is designed for routing, classification, prioritization, verification, and workflow control, making it easier to incorporate decision intelligence into existing applications, agents, and workflows in a secure, trusted environment. Microsoft added that Microsoft-Decision-1 is 4.5 times quicker than Quyet-1.0-Large and 35 times quicker than OpenAI's GPT-6 Sol. Pricing for the new model is $0.42 per 1M tokens for input tokens, while output tokens are free, and it is available in Microsoft Foundry and will soon be available in OpenRouter.

Microsoft's Azure cloud business passed $100 billion in annual revenue for fiscal 2026, with Azure and other cloud services growing 43% in the fiscal fourth quarter, unchanged in constant currency. Total quarterly revenue came in at $90.0 billion, up 18%, while fiscal 2026 revenue reached $331.8 billion, also up 18%, and Intelligent Cloud revenue hit $39.3 billion, up 32%. Operating income rose 18% in the quarter to $40.6 billion and 21% for the full year to $155.2 billion, while adjusted EPS was $4.74 for the quarter, up 23%, and $17.28 for the year, up 22%. Microsoft said one-time items added $0.27 per share versus its own guidance, including a $3.2 billion gain on its Anthropic investment, partly offset by severance costs and Xbox impairment charges, and that after adjusting for those items it still beat its expectations on revenue, operating income and EPS. At a forward P/E of 26.59 as of October 6, the stock trades above the sector's 23.81 but below its own five-year average of 30.52, with analysts expecting earnings per share to grow 19.77% in 2027.

Microsoft expanded its collaboration with Nvidia and unveiled a new generation of AI-powered Windows PCs, including the Surface Laptop Ultra powered by Nvidia's RTX Spark chip, which starts at $2,599 and becomes available on October 16 alongside Nvidia-powered AI PCs from Dell, HP, Lenovo and other manufacturers. Microsoft also announced the Nvidia-powered Surface RTX Spark Dev Box for developers and AI engineers, expected to ship in November at a starting price of $5,999. In its most recent fiscal fourth quarter, Microsoft reported revenue of $90 billion, up 18% year over year, while adjusted earnings climbed 23% to $4.74 per share, and the Zacks Consensus Estimate calls for current fiscal 2027 revenue to climb 17% to $390.2 billion with earnings up 9% to $19.65 per share. The FY27 EPS consensus is slightly up over the past 60 days from $19.63 to $19.65, while FY28 estimates have dipped from $23.30 to $23.24, and Microsoft stock trades at 27X forward earnings, above its Zacks Computer-Software industry average of 16X. Microsoft stock currently lands a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold), with shares up 9% year to date.

Stuut has raised a $52.5 million Series B round announced October 7, 2026, with participation from M12, Microsoft's venture fund. The company builds AI agents that handle the entire order-to-cash lifecycle, including order management, credit, collections, cash application, payments, disputes and deductions, and reports that 81.7% of its outbound collections run without human involvement while 95% of incoming payments are matched automatically. Stuut says these efficiencies have produced a 47% reduction in Days Sales Outstanding and freed up to 40% more cash flow for customers, alongside 90% quarter-over-quarter growth and 5x customer growth since last year, though those figures are vendor-stated and have not been independently audited. As part of the Microsoft relationship, Stuut is now an Azure benefit-eligible offer on the Microsoft Marketplace, has been accepted into the invite-only Microsoft for Startups Pegasus Program, and integrates directly with Microsoft Dynamics 365. The raise landed within a 24-hour window of a $7.7 million seed round for Monid, the first dedicated infrastructure raise for agent commerce, a pairing the company frames as validation of a forming agent commerce stack in which Stuut acts as the revenue-automation layer.

IREN Limited reported fiscal 2026 revenues of $707 million, up 41.1% year over year, as the Bitcoin miner pivots to an AI cloud platform. AI Cloud Services revenues surged to $128.8 million from $16.4 million, while Bitcoin mining contributed $578.2 million, and fourth-quarter AI cloud revenues more than doubled sequentially to $70.5 million. The company announced $4 billion in contracted annualized run-rate revenue for its 2026 capacity, with $1 billion operational as of late August, though ARR represents annualized contracted activity rather than recognized revenues. IREN delivered its first 50-megawatt Horizon deployment to Microsoft in August, with three additional phases scheduled for delivery during the fourth quarter of calendar 2026, and management targets approximately 300 megawatts of cumulative IT capacity in 2026, rising to 800 megawatts in 2027. The company reported a fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 net loss of $684 million, largely driven by noncash impairment charges from retiring Bitcoin mining equipment, and management expects fiscal 2027 capital expenditures of $25-$30 billion. IREN shares have declined approximately 7.3% over the past three months, and the stock carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Worldwide spending on artificial intelligence is forecast to reach $2.59 trillion in 2026, up 47% from $1.76 trillion in 2025, and to climb to $3.49 trillion in 2027, according to Gartner. AI infrastructure is the largest piece of that total at $1.43 trillion this year, more than 45% of all AI spending, and Gartner Distinguished VP Analyst John-David Lovelock called 2026 the inflection year. The forecast is showing up in results from the latest reporting season, with Microsoft reporting fiscal 2026 fourth quarter revenue of $90.0 billion, up 18%, and Microsoft Cloud revenue of $59.3 billion, up 27%, while Meta reported second quarter 2026 revenue of $60.80 billion, up 28%, and guided full-year 2026 capital expenditures of $130 billion to $145 billion. Broadcom reported third quarter fiscal 2026 revenue of $29.6 billion, up 86%, including AI semiconductor revenue of $16.7 billion, up 221%, and guided fourth quarter AI semiconductor revenue to $21.7 billion, while AMD reported second quarter 2026 revenue of $11.5 billion, up 50%, with Data Center segment revenue of $6.7 billion, up 107%.

Resilinc announced a plugin for Microsoft Copilot that gives authorized enterprise users natural-language access to live, organization-specific supply chain risk and compliance intelligence inside Microsoft applications. The plugin lets users ask questions about disruptions, exposed suppliers, sites, parts and materials, tariffs, sanctions and forced labor, with responses grounded in Resilinc intelligence and scoped to each customer's licensing, permissions and authorized access. The plugin is part of Resilinc's broader enterprise interoperability strategy and uses Model Context Protocol, or MCP, as a standardized connection layer, while Resilinc's supply chain graph supplies continuously updated multi-tier relationships among suppliers, sites, parts, products and materials. It operates within existing Resilinc security and governance controls, including authentication, tenant isolation, licensing and role-based permissions, and builds on Resilinc's collaboration with Microsoft, which previously demonstrated a Copilot experience at Hannover Messe. On September 30, 2026, the companies convened automotive supply chain leaders at Microsoft's Detroit office for an executive workshop on multi-tier due diligence, with participants including Microsoft, Resilinc, automotive manufacturers and suppliers, and the Automotive Industry Action Group. The plugin is available to eligible Resilinc customers, who should contact their Resilinc account team for enablement and applicable licensing requirements.

Microsoft has merged its three reporting segments into two, Agents and Infra and Devices and Consumer, starting with fiscal 2027, a change that puts its AI investment case in sharper focus. Restated figures show the Agents and Infra segment, which groups Azure with Microsoft 365 cloud and industry solutions, generated $268.1 billion in revenues and $136.4 billion in operating income in fiscal 2026, an operating margin above 50% even at the peak of the buildout, and management expects first-quarter fiscal 2027 Agents and Infra revenues of $75.15-$75.75 billion. The spending is enormous: fiscal fourth-quarter capital expenditures were $41 billion, roughly two-thirds of it on short-lived assets mainly CPUs and GPUs, first-quarter capex is expected to exceed $50 billion, and a lease reclassification has lifted the calendar 2026 estimate to about $175 billion, while free cash flow fell to $19.6 billion from about $25.6 billion a year earlier and Microsoft Cloud gross margin fell year over year to 65%. The strongest offset is visible future demand, with commercial remaining performance obligation up 84% to $678 billion, about 30% of it expected to be recognized as revenue within 12 months, Azure revenues exceeding $100 billion for the first time in fiscal 2026, and first-quarter Azure growth projected at 44-45% in constant currency against about 17% for Microsoft 365 commercial cloud, supported by more than 30 million paid Copilot seats and new usage-based billing. For fiscal 2027, Microsoft expects double-digit growth in revenues and operating income, full-year operating margins slipping by less than a point and free cash flow staying positive, and because so much of the spending goes to short-lived hardware the company can slow purchases quickly if demand weakens, though rising depreciation and margin pressure remain real risks. Amazon raised its 2026 cash capex outlook to about $220 billion, with AWS revenues up 37% to $42.2 billion in the second quarter and a backlog of $496 billion, while Alphabet lifted its 2026 capex guidance to $195-$205 billion as Google Cloud revenues surged 82% to $24.8 billion and its cloud backlog reached $514 billion, with slightly more than half expected to convert into revenue within 24 months, though Alphabet's free cash flow turned negative in the second quarter.

Microsoft is creating a dedicated division within its Xbox business to license, adapt, and monetize its marquee gaming franchises across non-gaming media. The new unit, called XP, short for Experience Points, will unify film and television adaptations, consumer merchandise, corporate partnerships, and live events that were previously managed across separate studio teams. Former Mojang executive Kayleen Walters has been named President of XP, bringing franchise management experience from Minecraft and more than a decade overseeing Star Wars licensing and products at Lucasfilm. Microsoft also appointed former Meta and Reddit executive Maria Angelidou-Smith as Chief Executive Officer of Mojang and Minecraft, where she will oversee operational and technical development of the flagship property as Walters moves to her cross-franchise role. XP will oversee a slate including a Diablo animated series with Netflix, a planned Call of Duty feature film, and a Minecraft theme park attraction scheduled to open in London in 2027, though Microsoft said XP will act as a centralized brand management arm rather than a standalone production studio.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Nvidia was founded because of Windows, speaking alongside Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella at an event unveiling a laptop that runs on Nvidia's RTX Spark chip. Huang said he and his co-founders conceived of a personal computer with 3D graphics in late 1992, around the time of Windows 3.1, and Nvidia started in 1993. When Nvidia went public in January 1999, Microsoft was worth about $390 billion, roughly $800 billion in today's dollars, while Nvidia was worth less than $1 billion, roughly $1.2 billion today. Nvidia first surpassed Microsoft in market value on June 18, 2024, and has remained ahead on every trading day since June 25, 2025; as of Wednesday's close, Nvidia was worth $5.73 trillion, about $1.8 trillion more than Microsoft's $3.93 trillion. Huang traced Nvidia's evolution to Microsoft's software, saying Windows 95 let a graphics chip connect to a PC, DirectX opened those chips to applications, and DirectX 8 marked the point when the two companies co-invented the first programmable GPU, work that later became CUDA.

Nous Research secured $90 million in Series B funding on October 7, 2026, bringing its valuation to $1.5 billion. The round was led by Robot Ventures and included NVIDIA, Microsoft's M12, Samsung Next, Y Combinator, Union Square Ventures, and Menlo Ventures. The capital will scale the Hermes Agent, an open-source AI assistant harness launched in February 2026, and push it into the enterprise sector, on top of approximately $70 million in prior funding. The company claims its flagship Hermes 4.3 model, built on the ByteDance Seed 36B architecture with a 512K context window, outperforms GPT-4o on several benchmarks, though those figures are entirely vendor-reported. Nous Research also claims a cost of $0.30 per million tokens, roughly 50 times cheaper than the $15 per million tokens charged for GPT-5 Medium, and its MIT-licensed ecosystem supports over 200 models. NVIDIA selected the company as the reference runtime for the Nemotron 3 Ultra 550B at Computex 2026.

Microsoft announced on the 7th that it will release the Surface Laptop Ultra, a notebook computer specialized for artificial intelligence processing, on the 16th. Equipped with the new RTX Spark AI chip from major U.S. semiconductor maker Nvidia, it can run high-performance AI models on the device itself. Because data can be processed within the device without being sent to clouds operated by AI companies, it suits highly confidential work such as preparing tax documents, and it can also handle games that demand high processing power. It runs Windows 11 as its operating system. Its retail price in Japan starts at 513,480 yen. At the announcement event on the 7th, Nvidia Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang said, "We have completely reinvented the personal computer."

Microsoft has unveiled an AI model for writing code that runs directly on personal computers, along with a new security technology called Microsoft Execution Containers, or MXC, that helps prevent AI agents from accessing data or performing actions without authorization. The launch is part of a plan to push Windows as a platform for autonomous AI agents that can handle everything from writing code to managing complex business projects on desktops and laptops, amid competition with Apple, which is racing to bring AI to personal devices. Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft's executive vice president for Windows and devices, said Anthropic, OpenAI and Nvidia will adopt MXC, and that the system lets corporate IT departments set rules for how AI agents operate and has Windows enforce those rules on each employee's machine. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said the company needs to make the desktop the safest place for AI agents to work, while Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who shared the stage with Nadella, said MXC technology will revolutionize how AI agents are built and deployed, and that without such technology, deploying AI agents would be nearly impossible. The push to bring AI to personal computers also opens the way for Nvidia to expand into the PC market, one of the key markets dominated by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

Microsoft announced on the 7th an artificial intelligence coding model that can run directly on a personal computer, along with new security technology that prevents AI agents from accessing data without permission. The move is aimed at countering Apple, which is pushing AI into consumer devices. At an event held in San Francisco, the company also unveiled the Surface Laptop Ultra, a high-performance notebook PC equipped with chipmaker Nvidia's PC chip, the RTX Spark. Microsoft is seeking to transform Windows into a platform for AI agents to write computer code and handle complex business projects on desktops and notebooks. For Microsoft, the move is a strategic bet on the prospect of shifting some of the work done in the data centers of its costly cloud computing platform Azure to high-performance Windows machines in businesses and homes. For Nvidia, breaking into the Windows PC market could allow it to crack one of the last major markets dominated by Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. The new Surface Laptop Ultra starts at 2,599 dollars, while a model with a 20-core processor, 128 gigabytes of memory, and 1 terabyte of storage costs 5,899 dollars.

Microsoft unveiled a broad set of updates to Windows on Wednesday, rebuilding the operating system around AI agents and other AI tools that run directly inside the PC software. Speaking at San Francisco's Dogpatch Studios, chief executive Satya Nadella said Windows is becoming a "hybrid intelligence" system, combining cloud-based AI with AI that runs locally through products like the coding tool GitHub, and he introduced the new Surface Laptop Ultra, a high-end device built for developers and creators. A central piece of the plan is a reimagined Copilot app integrated seamlessly into Windows, which according to Copilot head Jacob Andreou can run tasks without touching the cloud when they don't need heavy compute, making them cheaper and faster. The Surface Laptop Ultra uses Nvidia's RTX Spark "superchip," which Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang, who joined Nadella onstage, called "a beast" of a product; the Ultra will cost $2,599 and the Surface RTX Spark Dev Box that works alongside it will cost $5,999, with the laptop available beginning Oct. 16 and the Dev Box in November. The redesigned Copilot app will serve as a central interface for chatting with AI bots, tapping AI tools, writing code, and accessing a new Autopilot feature that lets users name an agent, assign it a role and goal, and set it loose on tasks such as project updates and tracking deadlines, though some features Microsoft showed off are not yet available. In July, Microsoft said its Microsoft 365 Copilot had surpassed 30 million paid seats, with net seats added doubling quarter over quarter, and its next quarterly earnings report is expected later this month.

Microsoft on Wednesday unveiled its Nvidia-powered Surface Laptop Ultra, a laptop designed to let users run AI models at home without relying on the cloud. Starting at $2,599, the Surface Laptop Ultra runs on Nvidia's Arm-based RTX Spark, which offers upwards of 128GB of onboard memory. Microsoft and Nvidia, along with rivals Apple, Intel, and AMD, are increasingly pushing the concept of running AI software in the home, where users install an app, download an open-weights model, and work without usage limits while keeping their data private. But local AI is not for everyone: it demands heavy system resources, and a Google AI subscription, for example, gives access to Gemini 3.1 Pro and Deep Research in Gemini plus 400GB of cloud storage for $4.99 per month. The Surface Laptop Ultra can likely handle local AI workloads with ease, but its price tag is a bit high for all but the biggest AI boosters and enthusiasts.

Dell Technologies announced an expanded portfolio of Windows PCs and workstations built for the age of agentic AI, developed together with NVIDIA and Microsoft. The lineup includes the XPS 16 Creator Edition, the first XPS laptop powered by the NVIDIA RTX Spark superchip, which combines up to a 6,144-core NVIDIA Blackwell RTX GPU, up to a 20-core NVIDIA Grace CPU and up to 128GB of unified memory in a chassis just 17.8mm thin. Dell also introduced the Dell Creator Edition Desktop, which brings the same RTX Spark superchip and up to 128GB of unified memory into a compact desktop with up to 1 petaflop of FP4 computing power and support for AI models up to 200 billion parameters. The company renamed its Dell Pro Max with GB10 and Dell Pro Max with GB300 workstations as Dell Pro Precision with GB10 and Dell Pro Precision with GB300, and said the Dell Pro Precision with GB300 will be available on Windows, scaling to 20 petaflops of FP4 compute and 748GB of coherent memory on the NVIDIA GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Desktop Superchip, supporting models up to 1 trillion parameters locally. The XPS 16 Creator Edition will be available in the U.S. for pre-order from Best Buy on October 7 and on Dell.com soon after, while the Dell Creator Edition Desktop and Dell Pro Precision with GB300 on Windows are coming soon.

LocalStack announced the public beta of LocalStack for Azure, a local cloud development platform for developers and AI agents building applications for Microsoft Azure. The launch marks LocalStack's third offering, following its AWS and Snowflake products, which the company says are trusted by more than 1,500 organizations with more than 18 million weekly active user sessions worldwide. LocalStack for Azure uses Microsoft Azure cloud service APIs to emulate how applications will behave once deployed, running as a lightweight container on the customer's private infrastructure so teams can test against a local cloud environment without live cloud credentials or provisioning delays. Co-founder and CTO Waldemar Hummer said the company has seen strong demand to bring the LocalStack experience to Microsoft Azure as AI agents change how software teams build and test cloud applications. Common use cases include autonomous agentic AI sandboxes, single-tenant developer sandboxes, and CI/CD automation, with the company noting that many cloud environments take 15 minutes or longer to provision when pushing code updates.