Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaks at a media briefing at the company’s campus in Redmond, Washington, on May 20, 2024.
Chona Kasinger | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft will lay off some employees who work on mixed reality, a spokesperson told CNBC on Monday. Although the cuts will affect the department that contributes to the HoloLens 2 augmented reality headset, Microsoft plans to continue selling the device.
The reduction comes a year after the software maker said it would make changes to its hardware lineup as part of a round of layoffs that hit 10,000 employees, including some in mixed reality. In the following months, Microsoft discontinued several keyboard models, causing frustration for some dedicated customers.
“Earlier today we announced a restructuring of the Microsoft’s Mixed Reality organization,” the spokesperson said in an email. “We remain fully committed to the Department of Defense’s IVAS program and will continue to deliver cutting edge technology to support our soldiers. In addition, we will continue to invest in W365 to reach the broader Mixed Reality hardware ecosystem. We will continue to sell HoloLens 2 while supporting existing HoloLens 2 customers and partners.”
Microsoft has not found great success with the HoloLens since its introduction in 2015. But the U.S. Defense Department gave a contract to the company for a modified HoloLens named the Integrated Visual Augmentation System. Soldiers who used the devices, however, reported dealing with nausea and other conditions, Bloomberg reported. Tests suggested that an updated model looked promising.
Since then, Microsoft and its highly valued technology peers have poured billions into commercializing artificial intelligence. Microsoft has raced to deploy Nvidia graphics processing units so people can use a Copilot chatbot and Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT. Premium AI features in Microsoft 365 productivity applications can write memos, draft presentations and summarize meetings.
In December, Microsoft further reduced investment in augmented reality and virtual reality, which blocks out the surrounding world, when it deprecated Windows Mixed Reality, which included tools for running applications in head-mounted displays.
The spokesperson said Microsoft will keep selling the HoloLens 2 headset that was released in 2019 but did not indicate that a new model would be coming. Insider reported in 2022 that the company had canceled a third version.
Apple brought out its own augmented reality headset, the Vision Pro, in January.
Microsoft continues to support a feature called Mesh that lets people in headsets participate in three-dimensional Teams video calls with colleagues. At the Microsoft Ignite conference in Seattle in November, CEO Satya Nadella said the company was “reimagining the way employees come together and connect using any device, whether it’s their PC, HoloLens, or Meta Quest.”
Cryptocurrencies extended their rally on Sunday, with bitcoin touching $80,000 for the first time ever.
The price of the flagship cryptocurrency was last higher by 4.5% at $79,800.19, according to Coin Metrics. Ether rose 3%, after passing the $3,000 level on Saturday. It last changed hands at $3,203.10.
Smaller coins saw bigger moves as investors continued to digest the implications of a second term for President-elect Donald Trump. The payments coin XRP surged 11%. The decentralized finance token tied to Cardano rocketed 40%. Memecoins dogecoin and Shiba Inu coin soared 17% and 31%, respectively.
“Crypto is poised to enter a golden era,” Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, said in a research note Friday. “Trump has promised to make America the ‘crypto capital of the world’ and his high level team is filled with strong crypto advocates … . The pro-crypto nature of his team, family, and donors increases the likelihood that Trump follows through on his campaign promises to the industry.”
Bitcoin touches $80,000 on Sunday for the first time ever.
Bitcoin was deemed a safe asset regardless of the outcome of the election — it is not considered a security, even by the Securities and Exchange Commission, and Trump has made big overtures about bitcoin like entertaining the idea of a strategic national bitcoin reserve and speaking about the need to keep all bitcoin mined in America.
Ether and other cryptocurrencies, however, stand to gain much more from the crypto-friendly regulatory environment that Trump has promised and appears to be a priority for many in his inner circle. For example, one reason the spot bitcoin ETFs didn’t see as much success as bitcoin ETFs is because they don’t distribute staking rewards. Many in the industry are hopeful that will change next year.
“In this environment, over the next two years we expect that bitcoin and other digital assets will trade significantly higher than the current all-time high,” Thorn said. “What was once an oppressive headwind in the world’s largest capital market will now shift to a tailwind, and no one is bullish enough.”
Bitcoin and ether have gained 18% and 32%, respectively, since election day. Coinbase rose 48% last week, its best week since January 2023.
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In this photo illustration, the OpenAI logo is displayed on a mobile phone screen with a photo of Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.
Didem Mente | Anadolu | Getty Images
OpenAI estimates that ChatGPT rejected more than 250,000 requests to generate images of the 2024 U.S. presidential candidates in the lead up to Election Day, the company said in a blog on Friday.
The rejections included image-generation requests involving President-elect Donald Trump, Vice President Kamala Harris, President Joe Biden, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Vice President-elect JD Vance, OpenAI said.
The rise of generative artificial intelligence has led to concerns about how misinformation created using the technology could affect the numerous elections taking place around the world in 2024.
The number of deepfakes has increased 900% year over year, according to data from Clarity, a machine learning firm. Some included videos that were created or paid for by Russians seeking to disrupt the U.S. elections, U.S. intelligence officials say.
In a 54-page October report, OpenAI said it had disrupted “more than 20 operations and deceptive networks from around the world that attempted to use our models.” The threats ranged from AI-generated website articles to social media posts by fake accounts, the company wrote. None of the election-related operations were able to attract “viral engagement,” the report noted.
In its Friday blog, OpenAI said it hadn’t seen any evidence that covert operations aiming to influence the outcome of the U.S. election using the company’s products were able to successfully go viral or build “sustained audiences.”
Lawmakers have been particularly concerned about misinformation in the age of generative AI, which took off in late 2022 with the launch of ChatGPT. Large language models are still new and routinely spit out inaccurate and unreliable information.
“Voters categorically should not look to AI chatbots for information about voting or the election — there are far too many concerns about accuracy and completeness,” Alexandra Reeve Givens, CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, told CNBC last week.
Elon Musk on stage before Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York, NY on Sunday, October 27, 2024.
The Washington Post | The Washington Post | Getty Images
Shares of Tesla climbed more than 6% in midmorning trading Friday, pushing the electric vehicle maker’s market cap past $1 trillion.
The company’s stock has rallied about 27% this week after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election and investors have grown optimistic that the former leader’s return to the White House could benefit Tesla. Elon Musk, Tesla’s CEO, has been a key ally for Trump throughout his campaign, pouring at least $130 million into a pro-Trump campaign effort.
Tesla had a market cap of $807.1 billion through Tuesday’s close. Before this week’s rally, shares of the carmaker were up about 1% for the year. Tesla’s stock is now up about 27% year to date.
Tesla market cap
CNBC
Tesla rejoins a growing club of tech names that are now worth more than $1 trillion, including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Meta (though all but Meta are worth more than $2 trillion). Tesla’s market cap first crossed the $1 trillion mark in October 2021.
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives has said that a potential Trump administration could spell less regulation for Tesla and other companies.
“Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players (BYD, Nio, etc.) from flooding the U.S. market over the coming years,” Ives wrote in a note to clients this week.
Trump has said previously he may cut the federal $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit. Those credits have helped to drive sales of Tesla vehicles historically.
In its most recent earnings update, Teslareported revenue of $25.18 billion and net income of $2.17 billion in the third quarter.
CEO Musk said on the earnings call that his “best guess” was that “vehicle growth” would reach 20% to 30% next year, due to “lower cost vehicles” and the “advent of autonomy.”
Tesla has been promising, and developing, driverless vehicle technology for more than a decade. Its key U.S. competitor, Alphabet-owned Waymo, has pulled ahead and is already operating commercial robotaxi services in several major cities.
On the third-quarter call, Musk said he would use his sway with a Trump-Vance administration to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.” Currently, approvals happen at the state level, which the CEO sees as a regulatory hurdle Tesla will need to overcome once it finally offers more than partially automated driving systems.
— CNBC’s Lora Kolodny contributed to this report.
Correction: This story has been updated to correct the year Tesla’s market cap crossed $1 trillion for the first time. Tesla’s net income was $2.17 billion in the third quarter. An earlier version misstated the figure.