Microsoft Financial News

The deadline for Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of video game company Activision Blizzard has been extended to as the companies seek to close a deal that has been opposed by regulators in the U.S. and the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority

Computer chip and software maker Broadcom’s $61 billion plan to buy cloud technology company VMware has cleared another hurdle after Britain’s competition regulator gave the deal provisional clearance

Investing.com — Goldman Sachs is on deck to release quarterly earnings that, some analysts fear, could be among the worst in the banking giant's history. Electric carmaker Tesla and streaming group Netflix will also deliver results after the bell. Elsewhere, Microsoft announces the price of its new generative artificial intelligence service in its productivity software.

  Leslie D'Monte The Generative AI race just got hotter with Meta releasing the second version of its free open-source large language model, Llama 2, for research and commercial use, thus providing an alternative to the pricy proprietary LLMs sold by OpenAI like ChatGPT Plus and Google Bard while giving a boost to open source LLMs. Developers began flocking to LLaMA--Meta’s open-source LLM that was released in February (https://ai.meta.com/blog/large-language-model-llama-meta-ai/). Researchers made more than 100,000 requests for for Llama 1, according to Meta.

OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and Google. OpenAI and Google have created amazing large language models that power chatbots like ChatGPT and Bard. These chatbots have impressed people with their ability to mimic human creativity and knowledge.

US equities rose Tuesday as results from Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley bolstered bank shares, and a rally in stocks linked to artificial intelligence resumed.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his Microsoft counterpart Satya Nadella have joined forces to introduce the world to Llama 2 (Large Language Model), the next generation of AI. What makes this collaboration even more intriguing is the decision to release Llama 2 as an open-source technology. This new partnership between Meta & Microsoft was announced by Zuckerberg in a power-packed Instagram post. The picture shared on Zuckerberg's handle captured the two tech titans dressed in blue, smiling for the camera as they celebrated the collaboration. His post read, «Today, we're open sourcing Llama 2 with our preferred partner @microsoft. This gives researchers and businesses access to build with our next generation large language model as the foundation of their work. Grateful to Satya and our teams for making this happen.»

LLaMA -- Meta’s open-source LLM that was released in February. Researchers made more than 100,000 requests for for Llama 1, according to Meta. LLaMA requires “far less computing power and resources to test new approaches, validate others’ work, and explore new use cases", according to Meta.

Twitter alternative developed by Meta. This news coincided with the announcement of a new AI partnership between Meta and Microsoft. Nadella expressed his excitement about joining Threads and expanding the AI collaboration with Meta.  In his inaugural Threads post, he stated, "Today is an incredible day to join Threads! We're thrilled to strengthen our AI partnership with Meta by integrating their Llama family of large language models into Azure.

A look at the day ahead in European and global markets from Tom Westbrook

Asia's stock markets were mixed on Wednesday with growth concerns dragging on China's equities while shares gained in Japan and Australia after healthy U.S. company earnings and retail data added to hopes that a recession there can be avoided. Dovish remarks from a European Central Bank policymaker boosted bonds and dragged the euro lower.

Republican lawmakers urged the Federal Trade Commission to drop its fight against Microsoft's deal to buy video game maker Activision Blizzard, calling it «an example of the FTC's rejection of sound antitrust policy.» The lawmakers, all members of the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, in a letter sent on Monday to FTC Chair Lina Khan and two commissioners and publicly released on Tuesday, said the proposed deal is a «pro-competitive transaction.» The agency, which enforces antitrust law, is considering its options after a U.S. District Court judge ruled last week that the deal was legal and an appeals court declined an emergency motion to pause the transaction.

Microsoft on Tuesday said it would charge at least 53% more to access new artificial intelligence features in its widely used office software, in a glimpse at the windfall it hopes to reap from the technology. The company also said it would make a more secure version of its Bing search engine available immediately to businesses, aiming to address their data-protection concerns, grow their interest in AI and compete more with Google. At its virtual Inspire conference, the company said customers would pay $30 per user, per month for its AI copilot in Microsoft 365, which promises to draft emails in Outlook, pen documents in Word and make virtually all an employee's data accessible via the prompt of a chatbot.

Big Tech firms Meta and Microsoft have teamed up to launch Llama 2, an open-source large language model from Meta that will feature on Microsoft’s Windows and cloud computing platform Azure.

Facebook parent company Meta Platforms has built an artificial intelligence system that rivals the likes of ChatGPT and Google’s Bard but it’s taking a different approach: releasing it for free

James Patterson, Suzanne Collins and Margaret Atwood are among thousands of writers endorsing an open letter from the Authors Guild urging AI companies to obtain permission before incorporating copyrighted work into their technologies

Wall Street’s frenzy around artificial intelligence helped pushed stocks to their best level in more than 15 months

French President Emmanuel Macron isn't happy that the European Union head office plans to hire an American expert as its chief competition economist

Investing.com — The S&P 500 delivered swashbuckling gains Tuesday as investors cheered better-than-expected quarterly results from a slew of major corporations including Wall Street banks and a record high in Microsoft amid AI-optimism.

Investing.com — The S&P 500 jumped Tuesday as investors cheered better-than-expected quarterly results from a slew of major corporations including Wall Street banks.

Mark Zuckerberg is doubling down on a different tack: He's giving it away. Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, said on Tuesday that he planned to provide the code behind the company's latest and most advanced AI technology to developers and software enthusiasts around the world free of charge. The decision, similar to one Meta made in February, could help the company reel in competitors like Google and Microsoft.