Bethesda Artist Says Microsoft’s Xbox Ended a No-Layoff Era, Turning Studio Retirement Dreams into Yearly Job Cuts

Microsoft and Google collaborated via the Global Signal Exchange to dismantle the RedVDS cybercrime marketplace, which sold virtual machines for fraud. The operation, valued at $66 million, targeted 130,000 organizations and compromised 191,000 Microsoft email accounts. Courts in the UK and US seized domains, while servers were impounded in Germany and Europe.

Nscale, an AI-focused data center company, attributes its 1,000x contract growth to Microsoft and Anthropic, which account for 85% of its $103B contract value. Microsoft has $43.8B in agreements, while Anthropic has a $44.6B deal with performance milestones. Nscale is not profitable, with a $1.02B loss on $140.6M sales in H1. The company plans a NY listing valued at up to $35B. Nvidia is a major shareholder and investor, but supply chain risks remain.

Cantor Fitzgerald analyst Thomas Blakey raised Microsoft's (MSFT) price target to $608 from $522 and ServiceNow's (NOW) to $174 from $141, both with Overweight ratings. He cited Microsoft's Azure growth and ServiceNow's AI-driven demand. MSFT shares were up 0.08% and NOW up 1.71% at publication.

Meta Platforms' stock rose 7% to $712.56 after Wells Fargo raised its price target to $796, citing positive early traction for its Muse assistant. The increase comes ahead of Meta's Connect developer conference, where usage metrics for Muse will be a focus. Alphabet and Microsoft also saw gains, but Meta's rise was more pronounced. Investors await Connect for further validation of Wells Fargo's target.

Unsealed court documents in The New York Times' lawsuit against OpenAI and Microsoft reveal executives privately discussed AI training practices as theft. Internal communications suggest the companies scraped paywalled content, built large training datasets, and removed copyright notices. Microsoft's director called the scraping the largest theft of labor in history, while its CEO testified paywalled content should be licensed.

Microsoft's Rajiv Kumar predicts India will transition from digital to AI public infrastructure in 5 years, building on successes like Aadhaar and UPI. Microsoft has invested $20.5B in India, focusing on infrastructure, skilling, and AI. The new Hyderabad data center is one of Microsoft's largest, supporting Azure services and future scalability.