Latest news with #SatyaNadella-led
Mint
6 hours ago
- Business
- Mint
Microsoft launches probe into claims that Israel used its Azure cloud services to spy on Palestinians
Microsoft has launched an 'urgent' probe into allegations that the Israel military has used the company's technology to facilitate mass surveillance on Palestenians. According to a report by Guardian, the Microsoft investigation comes after the news outlet's earlier report that the Satya Nadella-led tech firm's Azure cloud platform was utlised to store a vast collection of everyday Palestinian mobile phone calls by the Israeli Unit 8200 spy agency. Microsoft in a statement said 'using Azure for the storage of data files of phone calls obtained through broad or mass surveillance of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank' would be prohibited by its terms of service. The investigation is being overseen by lawyers at the US firm Covington & Burlin. This is the second time Microsoft has launched an external probe against the Israeli military using its technology. The first enquiry was commissioned earlier this year to look into allegations that the Israeli military was using Microsoft's technology during its attacks on Gaza. In May, the company said it 'found no evidence to date' the Israeli military did not comply with its terms of service or used Azure 'to target or harm people' in Gaza. However, the recent report by Guardian apparently sent shockwaves among senior Microsoft employees about whether some of its Israel-based employees may have held back on information regarding how Unit 8200 uses Azure. According to Guardian's joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call, Israel's Unit 8200 made use of a customised and segregated area within Azure and stored recordings of millions of calls made daily in Gaza and the West Bank. Since the report, Guardian said that Microsoft has been trying to assess what data Unit 8200 stores in Azure. Israel's offensive has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians, according to figures from the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza which the United Nations considers reliable. The Israeli government's plans to expand the war have sparked an international outcry as well as domestic opposition.
Hindustan Times
03-07-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
‘Why H-1B requests?' Microsoft layoffs spark strong reactions; questions around foreign hirings
Microsoft announced that it is laying off about 9,000 workers in its second mass layoff in months and its largest in more than two years. The Satya Nadella-led tech giant sent out notices on Wednesday, hitting the company's Xbox video game business and other divisions. According to a notice, 830 workers at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, Washington, lost their jobs. Microsoft is laying off 9000 employees in its latest cut(REUTERS) CNBC cited a Microsoft spokesperson to report that the company said that it will continue such organizational changes to best position its teams for success. The tech giant further added that the layoffs impact several divisions around the world, including sales. Read More: Microsoft layoffs: Why Perfect Dark reboot was canceled and The Initiative studio closed A memo to gaming division employees Wednesday from Xbox CEO Phil Spencer, as per AP, said the cuts would position the video game business 'for enduring success and allow us to focus on strategic growth areas'. Now, these layoffs have sparked strong reactions on social media, with some Americans questioning Microsoft's H-1B hirings. The tech giant had 4,725 H-1B visas approved in 2024. This year, social media users claimed that it has requested for 14,181 H-1B visas. However, the claim is unverified. 'Microsoft has submitted applications for over 6,000 H-1B visas for software engineers. Seems Microsoft wants to replace current employees with lower wage immigrants,' one person noted on X, platform formerly known as Twitter. Read More: Microsoft's AI can diagnose illnesses faster than most doctors, but it's not replacing them anytime soon "Why did Microsoft lay off 9,000 employees but request 14,181 H-1B visas?- Because they wanted to "reboot" their workforce with a global upgrade!" another one added. 'As Microsoft announces 9,000 layoffs, they have 4712 applications for H1Bs so far in 2025. They typically get a 99%+ approval rate from the Department of Labor. This is economic treason. Approving a single H1B right now is a grave betrayal of your fellow citizens,' a third person tweeted. Microsoft just last month cut another 300 workers based out of its Redmond headquarters, on top of nearly 2,000 who lost their jobs in the Puget Sound region in May, according to information it sent to Washington state employment officials as cited by AP. Microsoft's chief financial officer Amy Hood said on an April earnings call that the company was focused on 'building high-performing teams and increasing our agility by reducing layers with fewer managers.'
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Analyst Warns Apple (AAPL) To Be ‘First' To Feel Consumer Slowdown Impact
We recently published a list of . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) stands against other top buzzing stocks in May. The latest quarterly results from a couple of major technology companies have soothed concerns about AI demand that prevailed in the market following the launch of DeepSeek. Storm Uru, Manager at Liontrust Global Dividend Fund, said while talking to CNBC that the Satya Nadella-led tech giant's results were 'extraordinary.' '50% of that growth came from AI revenue, and that's an important marker for us going forward. Because after Deepseek about four months ago now, the debate really was around as digital intelligence gets smarter and as it gets cheaper, what is going to be the impact on demand. And what we found out last night was that demand is accelerating,' he said. David Grain, Founder & CEO of Grain Management, also believes AI demand could be strong amid a variety of factors. 'The advent of AI has created this explosion of demand for data centers and compute power, but the drivers of where it makes sense to actually build these data centers has a lot to do with the availability of reliable and high quantity of electricity. So I think there's definitely no slowdown in the demand side of the equation,' he said during an interview with CNBC. READ ALSO: 7 Best Stocks to Buy For Long-Term and 8 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In. For this article, we picked 10 stocks making moves these days. With each stock, we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here). Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 158 Gil Luria, D.A. Davidson managing director, said in a latest program on CNBC ahead of Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) quarterly report that his expectations were not high heading into the results. He believes Apple could be among the first companies to feel the heat of a consumer slowdown: 'We're not expecting a good result or a good outlook. What we're really hoping for is for Apple to give us visibility and a sense for a stable outlook — that they've wrapped their hands around what the impact from tariffs is going to be, and that they can give us an outlook based on that. You just talked a lot about Meta and Microsoft. Those results aren't just not as bad as feared — those results were actually good. I would not expect that from Apple. Let's not forget we're talking about a consumer-driven slowdown, and Apple is the consumer product company. Only later on, a consumer slowdown may lead to an advertising slowdown and maybe eventually to an enterprise technology slowdown. For now, the impact is first going to be felt by Apple, and we want to get our hands around how much of an impact that is tomorrow.' Apple's iPhone revenue was above estimates in the latest quarter, but revenue for Services, one of the key pillars of hope for the company's bulls, came in slightly below estimates. CEO Tim Cook said the company sees a $900 million impact from tariffs in the second quarter, and is unable to predict the effects of duties beyond that. However, the US and China have reached a truce on tariffs for 90 days. Would this development help the stock? Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) is desperately in need of new catalysts. The company's revenue in China fell 8% in fiscal year 2024, following a 2% decline the previous year. The Chinese market accounts for about 15% of Apple's total revenue, so this downtrend cannot be ignored. Investors had hopes from the Wearables, Home, and Accessories segment, but so far its performance has been weak. Vision Pro faces tough competition from Meta's $500 Quest and the more affordable Quest 3S, making it hard to justify its $3,500 price tag. The failure of Apple's HomePod, unable to compete with Amazon's and Google's lower-priced offerings, further highlights the challenges in this market. Apple's iPhone 16 has not shown promising growth prospects yet and investors are still in a wait-and-see mode on the AI platform. Columbia Seligman Global Technology Fund stated the following regarding Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) in its Q4 2024 investor letter: 'The fund maintained a position in Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) throughout the quarter through the release of the company's new iPhone 16 in September. Company leaders were excited about the release of the new model, as this is the first model that will feature enhanced AI capabilities through the Apple Intelligence features. Sales for the first few weeks in October and November trailed behind year over year sales from the iPhone 15, as availability of Apple Intelligence was not compatible with all iPhone models. Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI that has allowed the integration of ChatGPT into the Apple ecosystem, separate from the core Apple Intelligence features. This partnership highlights continued progress from Apple to introduce AI capabilities into its products and we expect the iPhone 17 to have even more expansive AI capabilities, increasing potential demand for the new model that is on track to be released in 2025.' Overall, AAPL ranks 4th on our list of top buzzing stocks in May. While we acknowledge the potential of AAPL, our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than AAPL but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Analyst: Meta Platforms (META) Has ‘Best Performing' Ad Business Regardless of ‘What Happens This Year'
We recently published a list of . In this article, we are going to take a look at where Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) stands against other top buzzing stocks in May. The latest quarterly results from a couple of major technology companies have soothed concerns about AI demand that prevailed in the market following the launch of DeepSeek. Storm Uru, Manager at Liontrust Global Dividend Fund, said while talking to CNBC that the Satya Nadella-led tech giant's results were 'extraordinary.' '50% of that growth came from AI revenue, and that's an important marker for us going forward. Because after Deepseek about four months ago now, the debate really was around as digital intelligence gets smarter and as it gets cheaper, what is going to be the impact on demand. And what we found out last night was that demand is accelerating,' he said. David Grain, Founder & CEO of Grain Management, also believes AI demand could be strong amid a variety of factors. 'The advent of AI has created this explosion of demand for data centers and compute power, but the drivers of where it makes sense to actually build these data centers has a lot to do with the availability of reliable and high quantity of electricity. So I think there's definitely no slowdown in the demand side of the equation,' he said during an interview with CNBC. READ ALSO: 7 Best Stocks to Buy For Long-Term and 8 Cheap Jim Cramer Stocks to Invest In. For this article, we picked 10 stocks making moves these days. With each stock, we have mentioned the number of hedge fund investors. Why are we interested in the stocks that hedge funds pile into? The reason is simple: our research has shown that we can outperform the market by imitating the top stock picks of the best hedge funds. Our quarterly newsletter's strategy selects 14 small-cap and large-cap stocks every quarter and has returned 373.4% since May 2014, beating its benchmark by 218 percentage points (see more details here). Number of Hedge Fund Investors: 235 Mark Mahaney, Evercore ISI head of internet research, said in a latest interview with CNBC that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is a high-quality stock amid low valuation. 'I think that at less than 20 times earnings, I think it's nicely dislocated and it's a high-quality name. I think it's going to be one of the best performing, relatively, ad assets out there, almost irregardless of what happens later this year. There's a lot of resiliency to the Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) model that may be underappreciated,' Mahaney said. 'I think investors are concerned about with Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META), I think is somewhat overstated. Yes, it's about 10% of their revenue comes from China-based companies, but those companies are still selling. They may not be selling into the US, but they're still selling into Europe, Latin America, etc. They're using Meta to get there. There's also this little bit of an interesting hedge. The worse things there are between the US and China, the less chance of a TikTok actually staying in the US, and that's going to be a source of funds I think for Meta. So I think there's a little bit more resilience to Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) than the market makes.' Meta Platforms' (NASDAQ:META) biggest strength remains its huge user base, which continues to grow despite record levels. The company has 3.43 billion monthly active users as of March, up 6% year over year. This equals about half of the world's total population, giving the company immense power for monetization and data processing. The company also raised its capex guide for the year from $60-$65 billion to $64-$72 billion, crushing concerns about an AI and data center slowdown. Another overlooked element in Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) business is its ads growth. The company, which depends on advertising for 98% of its revenue, is growing at a rate of 21% YoY. In comparison, Google Search grew by 9%, while Alphabet's overall business, including Cloud and Services, expanded by 12%. Even YouTube's year-on-year growth stands at 11%, well below Meta Platforms Inc (NASDAQ:META) rate. Given Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) current growth, Wall Street's estimates of 21% EBIT growth and 18% OCF growth seem conservative compared to the tailwinds the company is benefiting from right now. Nightview Capital stated the following regarding Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) in its Q4 2024 investor letter: 'Core Opportunity: Meta Platforms, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:META) platforms—Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Messenger—reach nearly half the world's population daily, making it one of the most powerful advertising ecosystems globally. With investments in AI and augmented reality (AR), we believe Meta is also creating significant optionality for long-term growth. Overall, META ranks 1st on our list of top buzzing stocks in May. While we acknowledge the potential of META, our conviction lies in the belief that under the radar AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns, and doing so within a shorter time frame. There is an AI stock that went up since the beginning of 2025, while popular AI stocks lost around 25%. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than META but that trades at less than 5 times its earnings, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock. READ NEXT: 20 Best AI Stocks To Buy Now and 30 Best Stocks to Buy Now According to Billionaires. Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Time of India
14-05-2025
- Business
- Time of India
Microsoft's mass layoffs come despite a streak of profitable quarters
Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers, nearly 3% of its entire workforce, on Tuesday, in its largest job cuts in more than two years. The mass layoffs come just weeks after the tech giant reported strong sales and profits that beat Wall Street expectations for the January-March quarter. So, why is the Satya Nadella-led company firing thousands if its top and bottom lines are in good shape? Details on the layoffs Notices to employees began going out on Tuesday. Hardest hit was the tech giant's home state of Washington, where Microsoft informed state officials it was cutting 1,985 workers tied to its Redmond headquarters Many of the affected people were in software engineering and product management roles. The layoffs will impact all levels, teams and geographies. The cuts will focus on reducing the number of managers, as the company hopes to remove unnecessary layers. Not the first time After a smaller round of layoffs in January, this will be the tech giant's largest cuts since 2023, when it shed 10,000 jobs, or nearly 5% of its workforce, as part of a broader industry trend post-pandemic. Live Events Strong financials Microsoft's results showed unexpected strength in its business. Sales surpassed $70 billion, up 13% from the same period a year earlier. Profit rose to $25.8 billion, up 18%. The results far surpassed Wall Street's expectations. Discover the stories of your interest Blockchain 5 Stories Cyber-safety 7 Stories Fintech 9 Stories E-comm 9 Stories ML 8 Stories Edtech 6 Stories Microsoft said revenue at its Azure cloud division rose 33% in the third quarter ended March 31, exceeding estimates of 29.7%, according to financial research firm Visible Alpha, part of S&P Global. AI contributed 16 percentage points to the growth, up from 13 points in the previous quarter. Rationale for the layoffs Microsoft has been investing heavily in AI, upping its expenditure for 10 consecutive quarters. The company is shifting resources toward these high-growth areas, and therefore cutting staff. The company is following other tech giants, including Meta and Amazon, which are also laying off scores of employees to optimise operations for long-term efficiency. This includes laying off middle management, automating tasks, and consolidating overlapping roles. In 2025 alone, Google has laid off about 200 employees , Meta has cut 3,600 jobs or 5% of its workforce, and Apple has laid off 100 employees in its digital services arm. DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria said the layoffs showed Microsoft was "very closely" managing the margin pressure created by its heightened AI investments. "We believe that every year Microsoft invests at the current levels, it would need to reduce headcount by at least 10,000 in order to make up for the higher depreciation levels due to their capital expenditures," he said.
