The U.S. Navy has been hit by the Chinese state-sponsored hack that Microsoft disclosed Wednesday, Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan on Thursday.
Del Toro said the U.S. Navy “has been impacted” by the cyberattacks, adding that it was “no surprise that China has been behaving in this manner, not just for the last couple years, but for decades.”
He declined to provide further detail on the incursion but suggested that the Navy had been contending with cyberattacks like this for years.
Microsoft issued a warning Wednesday as did intelligence agencies including the National Security Agency, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and the cybersecurity agencies of four other nations. The warnings alerted corporate and public enterprises that a sophisticated Chinese state-backed hacking group had successfully exploited a vulnerability in a popular cybersecurity suite.
The vulnerability, which was exploited by a group codenamed “Volt Typhoon,” affects critical cyber infrastructure across a range of industries, Microsoft said Wednesday. The company said the Chinese hackers had targeted communications and maritime sectors in Guam, which is home to a key U.S. military base.
The hacking group appears to have been focused on surveillance, rather than disruption, Microsoft said. But top intelligence officials and researchers expressed concern that Guam had been targeted, telling The New York Times that the island territory would be crucial to fending off a long-feared invasion of Taiwan by China.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry and state-controlled press dismissed the findings from Microsoft and the intelligence community as “disinformation.”
Earlier Thursday, a State Department spokesperson said it is vital for both the government and the public to stay vigilant. “We will continue to work with our allies and partners to address this critical issue,” spokesperson Matthew Miller said at a briefing.
A general view of the Microsoft office building is seen in Cologne, Germany, on November 18, 2025.
Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Microsoft said Thursday that it will increase the prices of Office productivity software subscriptions for commercial and government clients on July 1.
The company’s Office applications, which include Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Outlook, have been facing increased competition in recent years from Google.
“We are continuously investing and innovating our platform for the future,” Nicole Herskowitz, corporate vice president for Microsoft 365 and Copilot, wrote in a blog post. “In the last year, we released more than 1,100 features across Microsoft 365, Security, Copilot, and SharePoint.” The new features have added value to the suites, she wrote.
Price hikes for commercial Office subscriptions have been infrequent. In 2022, Microsoft raised prices of its productivity bundles for the first time since launching the original Office 365 subscriptions in 2011. Microsoft changed the name of Office 365 to Microsoft 365 in 2020. In January, Microsoft announced a price hike for consumer Office bundles.
Microsoft offers Office 365 subscriptions for commercial use that include access to its productivity applications, along with higher-priced Microsoft 365 subscriptions that also include Windows operating system updates.
Here’s a breakdown of the commercial price changes:
For small and medium-sized businesses, Microsoft 365 Business Basic will cost $7 per person per month, up from $6.
Microsoft 365 Business Standard will be available for $14, up from $12.50.
Microsoft 365 Business Premium will continue to cost $22.
The entry-level Office 365 E1 offering for enterprises will still be sold for $10.
Office 365 E3 will jump 13% to $26 from $23.
The Microsoft 365 E3 package including Windows for enterprises will rise 8% to $39 from $36.
The full-featured Microsoft 365 E5 will increase to $60 from $57.
For front-line workers such as cashiers, Microsoft 365 F1 subscriptions will cost $3, up from $2.25.
Microsoft 365 F3 will be available for $10, up from $8.
The U.S. Defense Department and other government clients will face similar percentage price increases.
The various subscriptions all exclude access to the $30 Microsoft 365 Copilot add-on that draws on generative artificial intelligence models. Some companies have started widely rolling out Copilot, while others have held off on expanding their deployments, CNBC reported last week.
In many cases, organizations receive discounts off of list prices, but Microsoft has cut back on direct volume deals for some types of customers.
Almost 43% of Microsoft’s $77.7 billion in fiscal first-quarter revenue came from its Productivity and Businesses Processes segment, which includes Office. In October, the company said revenue from Microsoft 365 commercial cloud services jumped 17%, while seats increased 6%, mainly from products targeting small and medium-sized businesses and front-line workers.
Every weekday, the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer holds a “Morning Meeting” livestream at 10:20 a.m. ET. Here’s a recap of Thursday’s key moments. 1. Stocks were little changed Thursday as Wall Street overlooked mixed labor market data. U.S. layoff announcements in November pushed the year’s total above 1.1 million, the highest level since 2020, according to job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Initial jobless claims, however, came in lower than expected for the week ending Nov. 29. Despite the muted session, Jim Cramer says the market’s still overbought. That means we’re not looking to put new money to work right now. Meta Platforms was an outperformer in the portfolio. Shares jumped 4% after Bloomberg reported that the Facebook parent plans to make deep cuts to its metaverse unit. 2. Costco reported U.S. sales for November that were slightly weaker than the month before, sending shares down 3%. Company-wide same-store sales, however, accelerated last month, up 6.9% from October’s 6.6% gain. The stock’s weakness Thursday doesn’t present a buying opportunity just yet, according to Jim, because its multiple is still too high. “There are periods of underperformance in Costco, but if you look at the longer term, it’s one of the greatest performers of all time,” he added. 3. Salesforce stock was up after management posted a huge quarterly earnings beat and raised guidance Wednesday evening. The company missed slightly on revenue. We liked all the paid deals Agentforce, Salesforce’s AI-powered platform, pulled in this quarter. Still, generative AI adoption continues to pose a risk to Salesforce’s seat-based business model. CEO Marc Benioff will be on “Mad Money” on Thursday. 4. Stocks covered in Thursday’s rapid fire at the end of the video were: Snowflake , Five Below , Hormel Foods , PayPal , and Kroger. (Jim Cramer’s Charitable Trust is long META, CRM, COST. See here for a full list of the stocks.) As a subscriber to the CNBC Investing Club with Jim Cramer, you will receive a trade alert before Jim makes a trade. Jim waits 45 minutes after sending a trade alert before buying or selling a stock in his charitable trust’s portfolio. If Jim has talked about a stock on CNBC TV, he waits 72 hours after issuing the trade alert before executing the trade. THE ABOVE INVESTING CLUB INFORMATION IS SUBJECT TO OUR TERMS AND CONDITIONS AND PRIVACY POLICY , TOGETHER WITH OUR DISCLAIMER . NO FIDUCIARY OBLIGATION OR DUTY EXISTS, OR IS CREATED, BY VIRTUE OF YOUR RECEIPT OF ANY INFORMATION PROVIDED IN CONNECTION WITH THE INVESTING CLUB. NO SPECIFIC OUTCOME OR PROFIT IS GUARANTEED.
People walk next to the Google Cloud logo, during the 2025 Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona, Spain, March 4, 2025.
Albert Gea | Reuters
Google Cloud announced Thursday a multi-year partnership with artificial intelligence coding startup Replit, giving the search giant fresh firepower against the coding products of rivals, including Anthropic and Cursor.
Under the partnership, Replit will expand usage of Google Cloud services, add more of Google’s models onto its platform, and support AI coding use cases for enterprise customers.
Google will continue to be Replit’s primary cloud provider.
Replit, founded nearly a decade ago, is a leader in the fast-growing AI vibe-coding space.
In September, the startup closed a $250 million funding round that almost tripled its valuation to $3 billion, and said it grew annualized revenue from $2.8 million to $150 million in less than a year.
And new data from Ramp, a fintech company that also tracks enterprise spending on its platform, found that Replit had the fastest new customer growth among software vendors. Google, meanwhile, is adding new customers and spending faster than any other company on Ramp’s platform.
Put those together, and you get a clearer picture of why both companies see opportunity.
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Vibe-coding emerged as a phenomenon earlier this year after AI models became more adept at generating code using only natural language prompts, allowing users with little experience in programming to use AI to create functioning code and potentially full applications.
Anthropic announced on Tuesday that its product Claude Code hit $1 billion in run-rate revenue. The coding startup Cursor, in November, closed a funding round that valued it at $29.3 billion, while also announcing it reached $1 billion in annualized revenue.
Replit, which bills itself as an easy-to-use product for non-developers, could help drive Google Cloud adoption among enterprises, and expand the reach of its AI efforts beyond traditional engineers.
Google is riding on the momentum of its new top-scoring model, Gemini 3. Shares of Alphabet have risen more than 12% since its debut.