Dina Bass

Microsoft Taps AI Executive to Run Xbox, Recommits to Console Microsoft Corp. named AI executive Asha Sharma to lead its Xbox and gaming business, replacing Phil Spencer, and will recommit to console users after years of developing products for mobile and PC pla...

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer is retiring and will be replaced with AI exec Asha Sharma, who says the company will recommit to console gamers. Matt Booty is becoming chief content officer reporting to Sharma. Sarah Bond will leave the company.

FTC Ratchets Up Microsoft Probe, Queries Rivals on Cloud, AI The US Federal Trade Commission is accelerating scrutiny of Microsoft Corp. as part of an ongoing probe into whether the company illegally monopolizes large swaths of the enterprise computing market w...

FTC is accelerating an antitrust probe of Microsoft and has sent requests for information to cloud and office software rivals relating to things like licensing Office/Windows for rival clouds & AI/Copilot, sources tell @sisco.bsky.social, me & @mattmday.bsky.social www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Congratulations to @bloomberg.com for earning an Honorable Mention for “The Hidden Costs of AI”. Read:
bloom.bg/4rmdhDc

By: Josh Saul, @naurtorious.bsky.social , Leonardo Nicoletti, @michellema.bsky.social , @dinabass.bsky.social , Demetrios Pogkas and Andre Tartar

Inside Xbox, a Game Studio Is Trying to Reinvent Itself Microsoft’s Obsidian Entertainment is searching for ways to make games more quickly and on smaller budgets.

NEW: I took a trip down to Obsidian Entertainment to talk about their stunning 2025, in which they somehow shipped three games. They were remarkably candid about their successes, their failures, and their plans for navigating the future.

For Businessweek Magazine: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Medical examiner believes death of man in ICE custody was homicide, recording says A fellow detainee says he witnessed Geraldo Lunas Campos being choked to death by guards at the ICE detention center in Texas on Jan. 3.

SCOOP from Douglas Macmillan

Medical examiner believes death of man in ICE custody was homicide, recording says

www.washingtonpost.com/immigration/...

honor of the 25th anniversary of the original Xbox unveiling at CES, here's a gift link to read the oral history I wrote for the 20th anniversary www.bloomberg.com/news/feature... (thanks to Mark Milian for the lovely edit of way too many words on this one)

One Year After LA Fires, Recovery Is a Battleground The price tag for the costliest blazes in US history is still climbing and disputes over who will pay are escalating.

A year after the LA wildfires, the price tag for the costliest blazes in US history is still climbing. Who pays is uncertain.

Our story on how risk and damage have spread beyond burned neighborhoods and the fight to limit losses and shift liability: www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Blizzard President Talks Culture, Bonuses and Releasing More Games Johanna Faries, who took over as president of Blizzard in 2024, reveals what’s coming from the storied studio

I spoke to Johanna Faries, president of Blizzard Entertainment, about improving the company's culture, fixing the opaque bonus system, her ideal game release schedule, Xbox pressure, and much more www.bloomberg.com/news/newslet...

Microsoft Is the House That Excel Built The ubiquitous spreadsheet software is expensive, derivative and depressing. It’s also the software the world can’t quit, even in the era of AI tools.

I have always wanted to take a close look at the enduring appeal of Microsoft Excel. For 40th anniversary, we dove deep with spreadsheet pioneers, Excel's original team and the current gen of experts and influencers by
@chafkin.bsky.social and me

www.bloomberg.com/features/202...

Has the whole Liverpool squad been replaced by their Temu versions?

CoreWeave Revenue Tops Estimates in Sign of Surging AI Demand Shares of CoreWeave Inc. tumbled after the company lowered its annual revenue forecast due to a delay in fulfilling a customer contract, a setback for a company that’s racing to keep up with the artif...

And CoreWeave shares are off after the company said a delay in supplying a customer will push some revenue out of q4: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Nebius Sales Soar as Neocloud Provider Inks AI Deal With Meta Nebius Group NV third-quarter sales soared by more than 300% as the Dutch neocloud provider announced an artificial intelligence infrastructure deal with Meta Platforms Inc. and predicted rapid growth...

Nebius says quarterly sales rose 355%, it's signed its second major infra deal -- this one with Meta -- and forecasts it will exit 26 with ARR between $7B and $9B: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Cerebras to Help Build Guyana Data Center, Unveils Sovereign AI Push Cerebras Systems Inc. is teaming up with the government of Guyana on a multibillion-dollar deal to build the area’s first data center, part of a push by the AI chip upstart to help countries expand th...

Lots of AI datacenter, neocloud and chip stuff this am: Cerebras signing an MOU with Guyana for a multibillion data center to serve the Caribbean nation and its neighbors + unveils a global sovereign AI program: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I really have nothing nice to say about this Liverpool match...and my mother always said if you can't say anything nice...

Also Microsoft is keeping its 20% revenue share, sources tell us, but OpenAI has more time to make payments.

Amazon Makes ‘Significant’ Cuts In Video-Game Division Tech giant will reduce game development work

BREAKING: Amazon is making "significant" cuts to its video-game division, moving away from MMOs like New World, and gutting its Irvine and San Diego development studios www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Microsoft Pushes Xbox Division to Hit Higher Profit Margins Management’s goal of 30% profit margins for gaming has led to job losses, canceled projects

Fans have spent the last two years wondering why Xbox is closing studios, canceling games, raising prices, cutting jobs, and releasing its games on rival PlayStation and Nintendo platforms.

This ambitious 30% profit margin target helps explain many of those moves. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Microsoft Pushes Xbox Division to Hit Higher Profit Margins Management’s goal of 30% profit margins for gaming has led to job losses, canceled projects

SCOOP: For the last two years, Microsoft has pushed Xbox to hit profit margins of 30%, an ambitious target that's far higher than the industry average.

This chase for profit has led Xbox to raise prices, cut thousands of jobs, and rethink everything.

Story: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

I for one can't wait for next week when we nail Mo and Cody to the touchline again, ask our fullbacks to underlap constantly, and nobody knows what anybody else is doing while our press looks like steaming dogshit but individually we create enough xG to say maybe on another day...

Well that was not an enjoyable match at all. Slot’s got a lot to work out here.

Globally, data centers are expected to consume more than 4% of electricity by 2035 - if they were a country they’d rank 4th in power use
www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202... via @bloomberg.com
By Josh Saul, Leonardo Nicoletti, Demetrios Pogkas, @dinabass.bsky.social @naurtorious.bsky.social

AI Data Centers Are Sending Power Bills Soaring Wholesale electricity costs as much as 267% more than it did five years ago in areas near data centers. That’s being passed on to customers.

Electricity now costs 267% more (!!) for 1 month vs. what it cost 5 years ago near data center hotspots. Awesome reporting from Josh Saul @dinabass.bsky.social Leonardo Nicoletti @naurtorious.bsky.social Demetrios Pogkas (gift link) www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

Invisible Technologies, a Scale AI rival that helped train ChatGPT, raised $100M, sources say at a $2B+ valuation, and reports $134M in 2024 sales (Dina Bass/Bloomberg)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

OD, the collaboration between Xbox and Hideo Kojima, is still in development, a Microsoft spokesperson tells me.

BREAKING: Xbox is canceling Contraband, announced in 2021 from Avalanche Studios (Just Cause), after four years of radio silence, sources tell Bloomberg News. This news arrives weeks after a mass layoff in which Xbox canceled several other big titles.

(the Ballmer story is linked in Matt and Brody's piece but it basically came about when Steve plunked himself next to me at a shareholder meeting to offer sweary color-commentary on CFO Amy Hood's presentation because he wasn't a fan of commercial cloud run-rate as a metric).

Microsoft Gives Azure Cloud Sales for First Time at $75 Billion Microsoft Corp. said its Azure cloud-computing unit generated more than $75 billion during the 2025 fiscal year, the first time the company has put a dollar figure on a critical business it has spent ...

Microsoft finally reported an Azure revenue number, after years of various less-than-specific ways of describing cloud sales that elicited complaints from analysts, investors, reporters &even a post-MSFT Steve Ballmer bloomberg.com/news/article... by @mattmday.bsky.social @brodyford.bsky.social

Many of Xbox's subsidiaries are getting hit by the layoffs this morning, including Call of Duty studios such as Raven. Big cuts at Forza Motorsport developer Turn 10 - nearly 50% of staff, per source.

BREAKING: The new MMORPG project from Zenimax Online Studios, maker of Elder Scrolls Online, has been canceled as part of the Xbox layoffs, sources tell Bloomberg News. The project, code-named Blackbird, had been in development since 2018. Still more news to come this morning.