Microsoft on Tuesday activated its “Stream Your Own Game” option inside the Xbox PC app, allowing members of the Xbox Insider Program to play cloud versions of the Xbox titles they already own without installing them locally.

The trial, available in the 28 markets that support Xbox Cloud Gaming, requires an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which costs $20 a month. More than 250 games— including console-only releases such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Star Wars Outlaws—are immediately eligible, with Microsoft promising to expand the catalog over time.

The PC rollout follows earlier expansions to Xbox consoles, smart TVs, browsers and Meta Quest headsets, and underscores the company’s strategy of making Game Pass content hardware-agnostic as it competes with Sony’s PlayStation. Streaming on PC can help players conserve storage space for large titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which demands 128 GB when installed.

Microsoft said its next annual client-operating-system release will be Windows 11 version 25H2, now available in preview to Windows Insider testers. Built on the same servicing branch as last year’s 24H2 build, the update will install as a small “enablement package” that replaces only the files that change, allowing most users to complete the upgrade with a single restart.

The decision effectively pushes back any launch of a full Windows 12 revision until at least 2026, ending speculation that a new numbered edition might ship this year. Microsoft has not detailed major new features, noting that code already sits dormant in existing monthly builds and will be activated closer to general availability in the second half of 2025. The leaner approach follows widespread complaints that 24H2 introduced bugs after a wholesale swap of system files.

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A ProPublica investigation reports that Microsoft has relied for almost a decade on engineers based in China and other countries to help maintain cloud systems used by the U.S. Department of Defense, including networks handling Impact Level 4 and 5 data considered vital to military operations. Because foreign nationals are barred from direct access, the company instructs China-based staff to relay technical commands to U.S. “digital escorts,” who then execute the actions inside Pentagon environments.

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Microsoft-owned mobile-games studio King plans to eliminate about 200 positions and shift much of the affected work to artificial-intelligence systems the employees helped create, according to an internal memo and multiple staff accounts cited by industry outlet MobileGamer.biz.

The cuts target level designers, UX and narrative writers, user-research staff and portions of the London-based Farm Heroes Saga group, which sources say will lose roughly half its workforce. One staff member said “most of level design has been wiped,” adding that the generative-AI tools the teams spent years training will now “basically replace” them.

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Federal Election Commission records show Rory Gates, the son of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and philanthropist Melinda French Gates, contributed $7,000 to Representative Thomas Massie’s campaign committee in June.

Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky, is preparing for a 2026 primary contest against a challenger endorsed by former President Donald Trump. The lawmaker has recently said he will vote against Trump’s proposed tax legislation, setting up a rare intraparty clash.

Gates, 25, has signaled interest in becoming a significant donor to Democratic causes, making the cross-party contribution noteworthy as Massie seeks resources to defend his seat.

San Francisco has deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, an artificial-intelligence assistant powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o, to roughly 30,000 municipal employees across all departments, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced on Monday. The move follows a six-month pilot involving more than 2,000 workers—including 311 call-center staff—that the city says boosted individual productivity by as much as five hours a week.

City officials expect the tool to automate tasks such as drafting reports, analyzing data and translating the more than 42 languages spoken by residents, allowing nurses, social workers and other frontline staff to focus on direct services. The rollout is covered by San Francisco’s existing enterprise agreement with Microsoft, meaning no incremental cost to taxpayers, according to the mayor’s office.

Lurie described the adoption as part of a broader effort to position San Francisco as a model for responsible use of generative AI in the public sector. With the launch, the city becomes one of the largest local governments worldwide to integrate large-language-model technology at scale.

Artificial-intelligence startup Cognition AI said Monday it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf, the AI-powered coding platform whose leadership decamped to Google late last week. The purchase covers Windsurf’s intellectual property, product, brand and the bulk of its roughly 250-person workforce. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Windsurf recently reported about $82 million in annual recurring revenue and more than 350 enterprise customers.

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A recent study conducted by the nonprofit research organization METR has found that the use of AI coding tools can reduce the productivity of experienced software developers. The study tracked 16 veteran developers as they addressed 246 real GitHub issues within large codebases exceeding one million lines of code. Results showed that when AI tools such as Cursor and Claude were allowed, developers worked 19% slower compared to when they did not use AI assistance. The research highlights that AI may not accelerate development for complex, familiar coding tasks and could even hinder efficiency in certain contexts. This finding challenges the prevailing assumption that AI coding tools universally boost developer productivity. The study has attracted attention across multiple technology news outlets, emphasizing that while AI can be beneficial in some coding scenarios, it is not a guaranteed solution for improving software engineering speed.

Microsoft released its July 2025 Patch Tuesday update addressing 130 vulnerabilities across its products and Windows systems. Among these, 12 were classified as critical, including flaws in SPNEGO and SQL Server. Notably, none of the patched vulnerabilities were actively exploited in the wild at the time of release, marking the first time in 11 months without an exploited zero-day. One critical flaw with a CVSS score of 9.8 was identified as potentially wormable, reminiscent of the WannaCry vulnerability.

Separately, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed active exploitation of a critical vulnerability known as 'Citrix Bleed 2' affecting Citrix NetScaler ADC and Gateway, which has been added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Additionally, a critical unauthenticated SQL injection vulnerability (CVE-2025-25257) in Fortinet's FortiWeb was disclosed and patched after reports of remote code execution risks. Another critical vulnerability, CVE-2025-47812, in Wing FTP Server is actively exploited via null byte injection, allowing attackers to execute commands as root through anonymous FTP access. Over 5,000 servers remain exposed to this flaw, prompting urgent calls for patching. These developments highlight ongoing cybersecurity challenges despite Microsoft's comprehensive monthly update.

Microsoft’s Outlook email platform suffered a widespread outage that began late Wednesday, 9 July, and extended well into Thursday, preventing many users around the world from signing in, loading inboxes or sending messages across web, desktop and mobile versions.

The company said on its Microsoft 365 status page that a configuration issue was disrupting authentication services. Outage tracker Downdetector recorded roughly 2,700 problem reports shortly before noon Eastern time on 10 July. Outlook, which serves more than 400 million users globally, experienced interruptions in multiple regions including North America, Europe and Australia.

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Microsoft Corp. told employees this week that artificial-intelligence tools trimmed more than $500 million from operating costs last year, largely by automating tasks in its call-center operations, according to people familiar with a presentation by Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff.

Althoff said AI systems now generate 35% of the code for new products and are boosting productivity in sales, customer service and software engineering. The company’s GitHub Copilot programming assistant has reached about 15 million users, he added, while early use of AI for smaller customer accounts is already bringing in tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

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Microsoft on Wednesday announced a $4 billion package of cash, artificial-intelligence credits and cloud services aimed at expanding AI education worldwide. The five-year commitment, reported by the New York Times, includes the launch of Elevate Academy, a programme designed to help adults acquire AI skills. The company says the effort will enable 20 million people to earn industry credentials and will be supported by existing philanthropy units now consolidated under the Microsoft Elevate banner.

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The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest teachers' union in the United States, is launching the National Academy for AI Instruction, a five-year initiative aimed at training 400,000 educators to integrate artificial intelligence into classroom teaching. The program, set to open in New York City this fall, is backed by $23 million in funding from major AI industry players Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Microsoft is contributing approximately $12.5 million, OpenAI $10 million, and Anthropic $500,000. This initiative focuses on equipping teachers with skills to use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Khanmigo in educational settings. In a broader commitment to AI education, Microsoft has pledged over $4 billion in cash and technology services over the next five years to support AI learning and innovation globally, including K-12 schools. The collaboration reflects a growing effort to embed AI technologies into education and workforce training programs.

OpenAI is preparing to release an open-weight large language model as early as next week, according to people familiar with the plans. The forthcoming system, described as comparable in size and reasoning performance to the "o3 mini" model, would be the company’s first openly available set of model weights since it published GPT-2 in 2019. OpenAI intends to distribute the model through Microsoft Azure, Hugging Face and other cloud providers, giving developers and enterprises the ability to run it on their own infrastructure.

The move broadens access to OpenAI technology and could reshape the firm’s relationship with Microsoft, which secured exclusive sales rights for most OpenAI models under a 2023 pact that also gives each side a 20 percent share of the other’s AI revenues. By allowing rival cloud operators to host the software, the open-weight release may undercut Azure’s pricing power and intensify competition among cloud platforms just as the partners renegotiate their commercial arrangements.

America's largest power grid is facing challenges in meeting the increasing electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Microsoft has reported a 168% surge in its energy consumption attributed to AI. According to Deloitte, U.S. investment in AI-related infrastructure is expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2029, with power demand projected to increase thirtyfold by 2035. The growth in AI infrastructure spending is closely linked to energy consumption, as for every dollar invested in high-end chips or cloud computing, an equivalent amount is spent on energy and minerals.

Oppenheimer upgraded Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) from Perform to Outperform, setting a price target of $600. The upgrade reflects strong confidence in Microsoft's artificial intelligence (AI) revenue growth and the continued momentum of its Azure cloud platform. Analyst Timothy Horan highlighted the scaling of AI revenue streams, Azure's infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) growth, and the company's Rule of 60 metric as key drivers for the premium valuation and long-term upside.

Other firms have also raised Microsoft's price targets recently, including Piper Sandler, which increased its target to $600 from $475 with an Overweight rating, citing bullish AI infrastructure spending and Azure momentum. BMO Capital also raised its price target to $550 from $485, maintaining an Outperform rating based on positive cloud transition insights. Following these upgrades, Microsoft shares rose 0.42% to $503.60, with options market data showing a put/call ratio of 0.76 and implied volatility indicating a potential daily move of $7.82. The consensus among analysts positions Microsoft as a long-term leader in AI and cloud computing software.

Oppenheimer & Co. upgraded Microsoft Corp. to Outperform from Perform and set a $600 price target, pointing to faster-than-expected growth in the company’s artificial-intelligence revenue and continued momentum in the Azure cloud platform. Analyst Timothy Horan wrote that investors are increasingly recognizing Microsoft as a long-term winner in software driven by AI adoption.

Microsoft shares rose about 0.8% in early New York trading after the call. The new target implies further upside for a stock that has already outperformed broader equity benchmarks this year as large-language-model services are integrated across the company’s Office and developer tools portfolios.

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Replit, an AI-powered software development platform founded in 2016, has entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft to expand its presence in the enterprise software market. This collaboration will make Replit's platform available through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and integrate its agentic development tools with Microsoft Azure cloud services. Replit's browser-native environments streamline the coding process by eliminating setup requirements, enabling businesses to build and deploy secure, production-grade applications more efficiently. The partnership aims to capitalize on the growing "vibe coding" trend, which is reshaping the tech industry.

This move is seen as a competitive challenge to Google Cloud, which has been a dominant player in cloud-based development platforms. Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has introduced Kiro, an AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE) that supports vibe coding by generating specifications, diagrams, and task lists before coding begins. AWS CEO Andy Jassy highlighted Kiro's potential to transform software development, positioning it as a competitor to Google's Windsurf IDE. Additionally, AI technologies continue to expand into gaming, with platforms like Verse8 enabling the creation of 2D and 3D multiplayer games from text prompts.

OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic have collectively committed over $20 million to establish the National Academy for AI Instruction, a five-year initiative aimed at training educators across the United States to integrate artificial intelligence into classroom settings. This effort is being launched in partnership with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest U.S. teachers' union, which will lead the teacher training center. The initiative seeks to provide free AI training to educators nationwide, aiming to close technology gaps and create a national model for AI-integrated curricula.

Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed he has not yet spoken with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg since Meta poached several of OpenAI’s top engineers, including four high-ranking staff members, but anticipates a discussion at the upcoming Sun Valley conference. This talent competition highlights ongoing rivalry among leading AI firms, including Meta and Elon Musk’s xAI. Additionally, Meta has been leveraging AI models from competitors like Anthropic to enhance its engineering capabilities. The collaboration between major tech companies and educators reflects a growing push to embed AI technologies in education while navigating competitive tensions within the AI industry.

Activision has temporarily removed the PC version of Call of Duty: WWII from the Microsoft Store and Xbox Game Pass following multiple reports of a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability being exploited by hackers. This security flaw allowed attackers to hijack players' computers during live multiplayer matches, resulting in disruptive actions such as unexpected notepad pop-ups, forced PC shutdowns, and changes to desktop wallpapers. The issue appears to stem from an outdated and insecure version of the game being distributed through the Microsoft Store. Activision took the game offline over the weekend to address the threat and prevent further incidents while working on a patch to fix the vulnerability. The removal highlights ongoing concerns about the security and version management of PC games available on subscription services like Xbox Game Pass.

Microsoft on Tuesday activated its “Stream Your Own Game” option inside the Xbox PC app, allowing members of the Xbox Insider Program to play cloud versions of the Xbox titles they already own without installing them locally.

The trial, available in the 28 markets that support Xbox Cloud Gaming, requires an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription, which costs $20 a month. More than 250 games— including console-only releases such as Baldur’s Gate 3 and Star Wars Outlaws—are immediately eligible, with Microsoft promising to expand the catalog over time.

The PC rollout follows earlier expansions to Xbox consoles, smart TVs, browsers and Meta Quest headsets, and underscores the company’s strategy of making Game Pass content hardware-agnostic as it competes with Sony’s PlayStation. Streaming on PC can help players conserve storage space for large titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, which demands 128 GB when installed.

Microsoft said its next annual client-operating-system release will be Windows 11 version 25H2, now available in preview to Windows Insider testers. Built on the same servicing branch as last year’s 24H2 build, the update will install as a small “enablement package” that replaces only the files that change, allowing most users to complete the upgrade with a single restart.

The decision effectively pushes back any launch of a full Windows 12 revision until at least 2026, ending speculation that a new numbered edition might ship this year. Microsoft has not detailed major new features, noting that code already sits dormant in existing monthly builds and will be activated closer to general availability in the second half of 2025. The leaner approach follows widespread complaints that 24H2 introduced bugs after a wholesale swap of system files.

Read more

A ProPublica investigation reports that Microsoft has relied for almost a decade on engineers based in China and other countries to help maintain cloud systems used by the U.S. Department of Defense, including networks handling Impact Level 4 and 5 data considered vital to military operations. Because foreign nationals are barred from direct access, the company instructs China-based staff to relay technical commands to U.S. “digital escorts,” who then execute the actions inside Pentagon environments.

Read more

Microsoft-owned mobile-games studio King plans to eliminate about 200 positions and shift much of the affected work to artificial-intelligence systems the employees helped create, according to an internal memo and multiple staff accounts cited by industry outlet MobileGamer.biz.

The cuts target level designers, UX and narrative writers, user-research staff and portions of the London-based Farm Heroes Saga group, which sources say will lose roughly half its workforce. One staff member said “most of level design has been wiped,” adding that the generative-AI tools the teams spent years training will now “basically replace” them.

Read more

Federal Election Commission records show Rory Gates, the son of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and philanthropist Melinda French Gates, contributed $7,000 to Representative Thomas Massie’s campaign committee in June.

Massie, a libertarian-leaning Republican from Kentucky, is preparing for a 2026 primary contest against a challenger endorsed by former President Donald Trump. The lawmaker has recently said he will vote against Trump’s proposed tax legislation, setting up a rare intraparty clash.

Gates, 25, has signaled interest in becoming a significant donor to Democratic causes, making the cross-party contribution noteworthy as Massie seeks resources to defend his seat.

San Francisco has deployed Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat, an artificial-intelligence assistant powered by OpenAI’s GPT-4o, to roughly 30,000 municipal employees across all departments, Mayor Daniel Lurie announced on Monday. The move follows a six-month pilot involving more than 2,000 workers—including 311 call-center staff—that the city says boosted individual productivity by as much as five hours a week.

City officials expect the tool to automate tasks such as drafting reports, analyzing data and translating the more than 42 languages spoken by residents, allowing nurses, social workers and other frontline staff to focus on direct services. The rollout is covered by San Francisco’s existing enterprise agreement with Microsoft, meaning no incremental cost to taxpayers, according to the mayor’s office.

Lurie described the adoption as part of a broader effort to position San Francisco as a model for responsible use of generative AI in the public sector. With the launch, the city becomes one of the largest local governments worldwide to integrate large-language-model technology at scale.

Artificial-intelligence startup Cognition AI said Monday it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Windsurf, the AI-powered coding platform whose leadership decamped to Google late last week. The purchase covers Windsurf’s intellectual property, product, brand and the bulk of its roughly 250-person workforce. Financial terms were not disclosed, but Windsurf recently reported about $82 million in annual recurring revenue and more than 350 enterprise customers.

Read more

A recent study conducted by the nonprofit research organization METR has found that the use of AI coding tools can reduce the productivity of experienced software developers. The study tracked 16 veteran developers as they addressed 246 real GitHub issues within large codebases exceeding one million lines of code. Results showed that when AI tools such as Cursor and Claude were allowed, developers worked 19% slower compared to when they did not use AI assistance. The research highlights that AI may not accelerate development for complex, familiar coding tasks and could even hinder efficiency in certain contexts. This finding challenges the prevailing assumption that AI coding tools universally boost developer productivity. The study has attracted attention across multiple technology news outlets, emphasizing that while AI can be beneficial in some coding scenarios, it is not a guaranteed solution for improving software engineering speed.

Microsoft released its July 2025 Patch Tuesday update addressing 130 vulnerabilities across its products and Windows systems. Among these, 12 were classified as critical, including flaws in SPNEGO and SQL Server. Notably, none of the patched vulnerabilities were actively exploited in the wild at the time of release, marking the first time in 11 months without an exploited zero-day. One critical flaw with a CVSS score of 9.8 was identified as potentially wormable, reminiscent of the WannaCry vulnerability.

Separately, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) confirmed active exploitation of a critical vulnerability known as 'Citrix Bleed 2' affecting Citrix NetScaler ADC and Gateway, which has been added to CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities catalog. Additionally, a critical unauthenticated SQL injection vulnerability (CVE-2025-25257) in Fortinet's FortiWeb was disclosed and patched after reports of remote code execution risks. Another critical vulnerability, CVE-2025-47812, in Wing FTP Server is actively exploited via null byte injection, allowing attackers to execute commands as root through anonymous FTP access. Over 5,000 servers remain exposed to this flaw, prompting urgent calls for patching. These developments highlight ongoing cybersecurity challenges despite Microsoft's comprehensive monthly update.

Microsoft’s Outlook email platform suffered a widespread outage that began late Wednesday, 9 July, and extended well into Thursday, preventing many users around the world from signing in, loading inboxes or sending messages across web, desktop and mobile versions.

The company said on its Microsoft 365 status page that a configuration issue was disrupting authentication services. Outage tracker Downdetector recorded roughly 2,700 problem reports shortly before noon Eastern time on 10 July. Outlook, which serves more than 400 million users globally, experienced interruptions in multiple regions including North America, Europe and Australia.

Read more

Microsoft Corp. told employees this week that artificial-intelligence tools trimmed more than $500 million from operating costs last year, largely by automating tasks in its call-center operations, according to people familiar with a presentation by Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff.

Althoff said AI systems now generate 35% of the code for new products and are boosting productivity in sales, customer service and software engineering. The company’s GitHub Copilot programming assistant has reached about 15 million users, he added, while early use of AI for smaller customer accounts is already bringing in tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

Read more

Microsoft on Wednesday announced a $4 billion package of cash, artificial-intelligence credits and cloud services aimed at expanding AI education worldwide. The five-year commitment, reported by the New York Times, includes the launch of Elevate Academy, a programme designed to help adults acquire AI skills. The company says the effort will enable 20 million people to earn industry credentials and will be supported by existing philanthropy units now consolidated under the Microsoft Elevate banner.

Read more

The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest teachers' union in the United States, is launching the National Academy for AI Instruction, a five-year initiative aimed at training 400,000 educators to integrate artificial intelligence into classroom teaching. The program, set to open in New York City this fall, is backed by $23 million in funding from major AI industry players Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Microsoft is contributing approximately $12.5 million, OpenAI $10 million, and Anthropic $500,000. This initiative focuses on equipping teachers with skills to use AI tools such as ChatGPT, Copilot, and Khanmigo in educational settings. In a broader commitment to AI education, Microsoft has pledged over $4 billion in cash and technology services over the next five years to support AI learning and innovation globally, including K-12 schools. The collaboration reflects a growing effort to embed AI technologies into education and workforce training programs.

OpenAI is preparing to release an open-weight large language model as early as next week, according to people familiar with the plans. The forthcoming system, described as comparable in size and reasoning performance to the "o3 mini" model, would be the company’s first openly available set of model weights since it published GPT-2 in 2019. OpenAI intends to distribute the model through Microsoft Azure, Hugging Face and other cloud providers, giving developers and enterprises the ability to run it on their own infrastructure.

The move broadens access to OpenAI technology and could reshape the firm’s relationship with Microsoft, which secured exclusive sales rights for most OpenAI models under a 2023 pact that also gives each side a 20 percent share of the other’s AI revenues. By allowing rival cloud operators to host the software, the open-weight release may undercut Azure’s pricing power and intensify competition among cloud platforms just as the partners renegotiate their commercial arrangements.

America's largest power grid is facing challenges in meeting the increasing electricity demand driven by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Microsoft has reported a 168% surge in its energy consumption attributed to AI. According to Deloitte, U.S. investment in AI-related infrastructure is expected to exceed $1 trillion by 2029, with power demand projected to increase thirtyfold by 2035. The growth in AI infrastructure spending is closely linked to energy consumption, as for every dollar invested in high-end chips or cloud computing, an equivalent amount is spent on energy and minerals.

Oppenheimer upgraded Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) from Perform to Outperform, setting a price target of $600. The upgrade reflects strong confidence in Microsoft's artificial intelligence (AI) revenue growth and the continued momentum of its Azure cloud platform. Analyst Timothy Horan highlighted the scaling of AI revenue streams, Azure's infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) growth, and the company's Rule of 60 metric as key drivers for the premium valuation and long-term upside.

Other firms have also raised Microsoft's price targets recently, including Piper Sandler, which increased its target to $600 from $475 with an Overweight rating, citing bullish AI infrastructure spending and Azure momentum. BMO Capital also raised its price target to $550 from $485, maintaining an Outperform rating based on positive cloud transition insights. Following these upgrades, Microsoft shares rose 0.42% to $503.60, with options market data showing a put/call ratio of 0.76 and implied volatility indicating a potential daily move of $7.82. The consensus among analysts positions Microsoft as a long-term leader in AI and cloud computing software.

Oppenheimer & Co. upgraded Microsoft Corp. to Outperform from Perform and set a $600 price target, pointing to faster-than-expected growth in the company’s artificial-intelligence revenue and continued momentum in the Azure cloud platform. Analyst Timothy Horan wrote that investors are increasingly recognizing Microsoft as a long-term winner in software driven by AI adoption.

Microsoft shares rose about 0.8% in early New York trading after the call. The new target implies further upside for a stock that has already outperformed broader equity benchmarks this year as large-language-model services are integrated across the company’s Office and developer tools portfolios.

Read more

Replit, an AI-powered software development platform founded in 2016, has entered into a strategic partnership with Microsoft to expand its presence in the enterprise software market. This collaboration will make Replit's platform available through the Microsoft Azure Marketplace and integrate its agentic development tools with Microsoft Azure cloud services. Replit's browser-native environments streamline the coding process by eliminating setup requirements, enabling businesses to build and deploy secure, production-grade applications more efficiently. The partnership aims to capitalize on the growing "vibe coding" trend, which is reshaping the tech industry.

This move is seen as a competitive challenge to Google Cloud, which has been a dominant player in cloud-based development platforms. Meanwhile, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has introduced Kiro, an AI-powered integrated development environment (IDE) that supports vibe coding by generating specifications, diagrams, and task lists before coding begins. AWS CEO Andy Jassy highlighted Kiro's potential to transform software development, positioning it as a competitor to Google's Windsurf IDE. Additionally, AI technologies continue to expand into gaming, with platforms like Verse8 enabling the creation of 2D and 3D multiplayer games from text prompts.

OpenAI, Microsoft, and Anthropic have collectively committed over $20 million to establish the National Academy for AI Instruction, a five-year initiative aimed at training educators across the United States to integrate artificial intelligence into classroom settings. This effort is being launched in partnership with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the second-largest U.S. teachers' union, which will lead the teacher training center. The initiative seeks to provide free AI training to educators nationwide, aiming to close technology gaps and create a national model for AI-integrated curricula.

Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman revealed he has not yet spoken with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg since Meta poached several of OpenAI’s top engineers, including four high-ranking staff members, but anticipates a discussion at the upcoming Sun Valley conference. This talent competition highlights ongoing rivalry among leading AI firms, including Meta and Elon Musk’s xAI. Additionally, Meta has been leveraging AI models from competitors like Anthropic to enhance its engineering capabilities. The collaboration between major tech companies and educators reflects a growing push to embed AI technologies in education while navigating competitive tensions within the AI industry.

Activision has temporarily removed the PC version of Call of Duty: WWII from the Microsoft Store and Xbox Game Pass following multiple reports of a remote code execution (RCE) vulnerability being exploited by hackers. This security flaw allowed attackers to hijack players' computers during live multiplayer matches, resulting in disruptive actions such as unexpected notepad pop-ups, forced PC shutdowns, and changes to desktop wallpapers. The issue appears to stem from an outdated and insecure version of the game being distributed through the Microsoft Store. Activision took the game offline over the weekend to address the threat and prevent further incidents while working on a patch to fix the vulnerability. The removal highlights ongoing concerns about the security and version management of PC games available on subscription services like Xbox Game Pass.