Ashley Stewart

Microsoft employees recently shared their compensation and promotion details in a huge spreadsheet. Business Insider obtained a copy of the document.

The pharmaceutical company IT exec said Microsoft's Copilot AI tools were not worth the extra money. They just weren't good enough.

After Microsoft laid off an internal team focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion, a team leader blasted the company for a lack of investment in these efforts.“True systems-change work associated with DEI programs everywhere are no longer business critical or smart as they were in 2020,” a leader of the team wrote in an email sent to thousands of employees, which was viewed by Business Insider.The email states the team was eliminated due to “changing business needs” as of July 1. It’s unclea…

An internal Microsoft tracking tool has revealed which executives AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman is working with most during his first few months on the job.Microsoft in March hired Suleyman, the head of startup Inflection AI and a cofounder of AI pioneer DeepMind, to be CEO of a newly formed Microsoft AI group. The organization is responsible for consumer AI products such as Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot and the Bing search engine.An internal organizational chart viewed by Business Insider revealed 1…

Amazon employees are roasting the company for apparently holding a private Foo Fighters concert for senior leaders after a tough couple of years of layoffs and cost-cutting, according to internal Slack messages viewed by Business Insider.The company has laid off more than 27,000 people since late 2022, introduced an unusually strict return-to-office mandate, and, according to the messages, slashed budgets previously used to boost team morale.However, a blog post from May 30 suggests the company…

Fewer Microsoft employees believe they are getting a “good deal” by working at the company, according to results of annual surveys viewed by Business Insider.In Microsoft’s annual poll called “Employee Signals,” 62% of employees this year answered favorably to a question about whether they get a “good deal at Microsoft (i.e. there is a reasonable balance between what I contribute to Microsoft and what I get in return).“That’s down from 69% in last year’s poll. The 2023 survey closed before Micro…

Oracle executives in an internal meeting said much remained to be decided about its plans to shutter its advertising business, according to audio reviewed by Business Insider.The transition will happen in phases, but there’s no “catch-all date,” a top exec said, with another adding that the company would try to find roles elsewhere in the company for affected employees.Oracle this week disclosed plans to wind down the business, which brought in just $300 million in the most-recent fiscal year, d…

Microsoft is considering a major revamp of its important suite of software tools, part of an effort to make more money from its huge investments in artificial intelligence, according to people familiar with the matter.The plan focuses on Microsoft 365, a popular suite of productivity software used by thousands of businesses. The outcomes could include repackaging AI features into existing licenses or creating a more expensive bundle with Copilot AI capabilities, one of the people with direct kno…

A leaked organization chart shows the people running Microsoft’s new AI group under Mustafa Suleyman.Microsoft in March hired Suleyman, the head of the startup Inflection AI and a cofounder of the AI pioneer DeepMind, to be the CEO of a newly formed Microsoft AI group. The organization is responsible for consumer AI products such as Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot and the Bing search engine.The org chart reveals 12 executives who report directly to Suleyman, including the Inflection cofounder Kar…

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman’s ghostwriter landed a job on staff in the company’s new consumer artificial intelligence organization, according to an internal organizational chart.Microsoft in March hired Suleyman, head of startup Inflection AI and cofounder of AI pioneer DeepMind, to be CEO of a newly formed “Microsoft AI” group. The organization is responsible for consumer AI products such as Microsoft’s Copilot AI chatbot and the Bing search engine.Michael Bhaskar was the co-writer of Sul…

Quantum computing is a gnarly technical challenge that tech giants have been hacking away at for more than a decade.Microsoft isn’t giving up, according to an internal memo detailing cuts in other parts of the company’s operations.Business Insider broke the news on Monday that Microsoft is cutting hundreds of jobs from its Azure cloud business. Executive Jason Zander blamed the cuts on Microsoft’s need to purse AI investments, according to an internal memo obtained by BI.In that memo, Zander als…

Microsoft is cutting hundreds of employees from its Azure cloud business, according to people familiar with the situation.The layoffs impacted teams including Azure for Operators and Mission Engineering, the people said. One of the people estimated the Azure for Operators layoffs involved as many as 1,500 job cuts. These sources asked not to be identified discussing private matters.The Azure for Operators and Mission Engineering teams are part of an organization created to house Microsoft moonsh…

As Microsoft cuts hundreds from its Azure cloud business, executive Jason Zander explained in an email to employees that the company is making the changes to support investment in artificial intelligence.“Our clear focus as a company is to define the AI wave and empower all our customers to succeed in the adoption of this transformative technology,” Zander wrote in an internal email viewed by Insider. “Along the way, we make decisions that align with our long-term vision and strategy while ensur…

Microsoft is planning AI computing resources for a LinkedIn “Copilot,” according to an internal document.The planning document, viewed by Business Insider, lists LinkedIn among existing Copilots, including GitHub, Security, and Azure.It’s unclear what the reference to LinkedIn Copilot, specifically, means. Microsoft already has an AI-powered writing assistant and other AI tools for LinkedIn. However, the AI computing resources planned for LinkedIn Copilot in the document suggest bigger plans tha…

Larry Ellison’s vision for the future of medicine crystallized for him in a doctor’s office.Oracle’s billionaire cofounder needed medication to help manage his cholesterol. He said his “very fancy doctor,” a molecular biologist, prescribed a statin called Crestor. The choice was informed by Ellison’s age, sex, ethnicity, and family history. But it was still, Ellison realized, just “a pretty good guess.“Which got him thinking: What if, instead of guesswork, doctors could lean on generative AI to…

Adam Selipsky’s exit as Amazon Web Services CEO seemed inevitable to current and former employees who spoke to Business Insider about his departure.Over the past few months, Selipsky has appeared inconsistently at Weekly Business Review meetings, during which teams provide updates about their performance, a person familiar with the meetings told Business Insider.“A lot of people were confused about why — the idea that Jassy wouldn’t have shown up is just crazy,” this person said. “Now it makes s…

After freezing salaries last year, Microsoft plans to restart performance-based raises for some employees during this year’s review cycle, which started in April.The plans haven’t been announced companywide, but Scott Guthrie, the executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud and AI group, said at an April 30 employee meeting that merit raises would increase this year, according to two people present. Microsoft calls performance-based raises “merit increases.“Though the generative-AI hype has pr…

In 2017, just before Microsoft forged a partnership with a then relatively unknown startup called OpenAI, Bill Gates shared a memo with CEO Satya Nadella and a small group of the company’s top executives. A new world order, Gates predicted, would soon be brought on by what he called “AI agents” — digital personal assistants that could anticipate our every want and need. These agents would be far more powerful than Siri and Alexa, with godlike knowledge and supernatural intuition.“Agents are not…

Microsoft is blocking employee access to Perplexity AI, one of the largest customers of its Azure OpenAI service, according to two people familiar with the matter.Perplexity’s product is an AI chatbot search engine that provides conversational answers. It’s powered by Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service, which helps companies like Walmart and JPMorgan Chase build generative AI into their operations and products. Microsoft on Tuesday also announced Coca-Cola signed a $1.1 billion deal that included…

Microsoft has an internal target to amass 1.8 million AI chips by the end of 2024, according to a document viewed by Business Insider.Microsoft is trying to make generative AI faster, better, and cheaper, but the effort relies heavily on Microsoft buying the chips, graphic processing units, primarily from designer Nvidia.The document suggests that Microsoft plans to triple the number of GPUs it has in 2024.The company, in partnership with OpenAI, is at the forefront of the generative AI boom. St…