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Microsoft

This Month

Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank.

SoftBank to invest $721m in OpenAI

The move is part of a funding round that would value the artificial intelligence start-up at an eye-watering $US150 billion.

  • Seth Fiegerman

September

Emissions from a coal-fired power plant in Kansas City, Missouri.

US climate change targets threatened by tech energy surge from AI

The latest assessment puts the US trajectory even further from its national target to cut its emissions by 50-52 per cent by 2030 from 2005 levels.

  • Amanda Chu, Jamie Smyth and Aime Williams
Sam Altman founded the company in 2015 as a non-profit research organisation with the goal of building artificial intelligence that would be safe and beneficial to humanity.

Fast-growing OpenAI is burning through truck loads of cash

As the company looks for more outside investors, documents reveal consumer fascination with ChatGPT and a serious need for more money.

  • Mike Isaac and Erin Griffith
Telstra’s Narelle Devine, Qantas chairman John Mullen and top cyber spy Abigail Bradshaw say the CrowdStrike outage provided important lessons for corporate Australia.

How CrowdStrike’s outage became Australia’s big cyberattack rehearsal

Qantas chairman John Mullen got the “blue screen of death” while Telstra’s cyber chief Narelle Devine was in the pool sipping cocktails when she got the call that something was seriously wrong.

  • Tess Bennett and Paul Smith
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

Microsoft’s climate hypocrisy on AI

The tech giant has marketed AI technology to ExxonMobil and Chevron as a powerful tool for finding and developing new oil and gas reserves.

  • Karen Hao
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Amazon

Amazon orders staff back to the office five days a week

The new rule appears to be the most stringent return-to-office decision among big tech companies and could be a harbinger of more to come.

  • Karen Weise and Emma Goldberg
Ashley Lester, Global Head of Research at MSCI, says there are still lessons to be learnt from the dot-com crash.

Investors have forgotten the lessons of the dotcom crash

MSCI’s head of research Ashley Lester has some thoughts on what many analysts have warned is the next bubble: the rapid rise in US tech valuations.

  • Joshua Peach
Robin Khuda and Chris Tynan.

What we missed in the AirTrunk frenzy

AirTrunk founder Robin Khuda is thinking bigger than his own company. He says the staggering growth prospects for data centres can change the Australian economy.  

  • James Thomson
AirTrunk’s deals have been themed around Star Wars, with the company’s chief financial officer a fan of the sci-fi series.

Inside Project Amidala: AirTrunk’s $24b deal

Four years ago, Blackstone missed its chance to buy up the data centre giant. It wasn’t about to make the same mistake twice, even if it cost $24 billion.

  • Anthony Macdonald
After the column ran, Microsoft gave Bing a lobotomy, neutralising the chatbot’s outbursts and installing new guardrails to prevent more unhinged behaviour.

Could a kill switch help us control dangerous AI?

The government is calling for business responses to its plans to rein in the use of potentially dangerous forms of artificial intelligence.

  • Tess Bennett

Inside the high-tech sheds worth $24b to AirTrunk

From a single room holding a hard-working mainframe, data centres have evolved into major pieces of high-powered, high-tech infrastructure.

  • Campbell Kwan
AirTrunk founder Robin Khuda founded AirTrunk less than a decade ago.

AirTrunk’s $23.5b AI pay day

Blackstone emerged as the winning bidder in the year’s biggest merger and acquisition deal, netting its founder Robin Khuda a $1 billion-plus payday.

  • Paul Smith and Anthony Macdonald
Incoming Scyne CEO John Ball.

Scyne appoints Google executive as inaugural CEO

Public sector consulting firm Scyne has appointed senior Google executive John Ball as its inaugural chief executive.

  • Edmund Tadros
Not holding the ‘Magnificent 10’ in a portfolio would have led to a 1.93 per cent lower annual return.

How Australia’s ‘magnificent 10’ contributed to returns over 20 years

How costly was failing to pick the ASX’s 10 top performers over the past two decades? Vanguard did the sums

  • Carole Okigbo
Eric Schmidt, former CEO and chairman of Google.

Why ex-Google chief Eric Schmidt warns we may have to pull plug on AI

The former Google chief executive and chairman said Western democracies had to regain lost ground in industrial policy to counter China.

  • Sam Buckingham-Jones
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Scott Farquhar, co-CEO and co-founder of Atlassian.

Farquhar’s Atlassian era passes without a grand farewell

Co-founders Scott Farquhar and Mike Cannon-Brookes spent their final day of as co-CEOs working from home. Venture capitalists say Farquhar’s influence goes beyond Atlassian.

  • Tess Bennett

August

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Star too big to fail; Harris’ GOP surprise; NAB bankers jump to CBA

Read everything that’s happened in the news so far today.

Apple is considering investing in OpenAI.

Apple, Nvidia in talks to invest in OpenAI valuing it at $147b

The technology giants would join a multibillion-dollar funding round alongside Microsoft and Thrive Capital that would value the start-up at $147 billion.

  • Cade Metz, Michael J. de la Merced and Tripp Mickle
Google says the deal will help journalism and the artificial intelligence sector in California.

Google agreed to pay millions for California news. Journalists call it a bad deal

The agreement will direct tens of millions of dollars of public and private funds to keep local news organisations afloat.

  • Updated
  • Tran Nguyen
Bankers will test issuing certificates of deposit on an R3 Corda blockchain operated by ASIC-licensed Imperium Markets.

This ‘Bloomberg killer’, backed by Microsoft, might succeed

There are a number of so-called ‘Bloomberg killers’ already littering the financial technology graveyard. Can this one win over users?

  • Michael Bow

Original URL: https://www.afr.com/company/microsoft-hqw