TOPIC

/ company

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is one of the world’s biggest software makers and manufactures and licenses a range of products and services related to computing. Founded in 1975 by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, the company is probably best known for its Windows software, although it has begun an aggressive drive into the mobile sector seeking to make inroads on market share held by Google and Apple. It paid 5.44 billion euros for the handset business of Nokia in September 2013.

Chairman / President

Satya Nadella

CEO / Managing Director

Satya Nadella

CFO / Finance Director

Amy Hood

Industry

Computer software
Consumer electronics
Computer hardware

Website

microsoft.com

Headquarters address

One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052, United States

Stock Code

NASDAQ:MSFT

Year founded

1975

in partnership with:

C-SUITE MEMBER

Leo Liu

GM, HK & Macau

Kingboard Laminates Holdings is one of the world’s biggest makers of laminate materials used in circuit boards for AI servers. Photo: Shutterstock

Banking & finance

AI boom sparks Kingboard subsidiary’s US$1.5b stake sale to ramp up PCB capacity

AI server backlogs and supply chain strains push Kingboard to tap markets and expand circuit board output.

17 Jun 2026 - 4:45PM

United States

SpaceX vaults past Amazon’s market value, briefly topping Microsoft

17 Jun 2026 - 6:58AM

United States

Bill Gates says Epstein blackmailed him using knowledge of his affairs

11 Jun 2026 - 12:19PM

China’s private sector

Microsoft cuts hundreds of mainland cloud jobs, as China, US tighten data laws

The firm is laying off some employees at its cloud unit amid ongoing restrictions on cross-border data flows between the two countries.

9 Jun 2026 - 4:58PM

2026 Xi-Trump summits

No need for ‘AI Iron Curtain’, China’s Communist Party mouthpiece says

People’s Daily says China and US should work together to advance the development and governance of artificial intelligence.

1 Jun 2026 - 7:00PMvideocam

Hong Kong society

Letters | Is ranking Hong Kong’s civil servants on a curve a good idea?

Readers discuss a proposed ranking system for the civil service, opportunities in Central Asia, and the Ebola threat.

1 Jun 2026 - 11:30AM

Video gaming

Forza Horizon 6 brings the car racing franchise to Japan and it is a winner

Forza Horizon took racing simulation games from circuits into the ‘real world’ and Horizon 6, set in Japan, is one of the best editions yet.

31 May 2026 - 7:15PMvideocam

The Forza Horizon 6 video game takes the full-throttle festival to Japan, mixing touge runs and spectacle races. Photo: Playground Games/Microsoft/dpa

Artificial intelligence

US banks roll out American AI in Hong Kong despite geopolitical tensions

US AI companies have restricted access for users in Hong Kong and mainland China, forcing banks to navigate a compliance minefield.

28 May 2026 - 2:06PM

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba AI beats Google and OpenAI in global coding rankings

The Chinese tech giant is the only non-US firm to crack the top five in Code Arena’s latest leaderboard.

27 May 2026 - 8:15PM

Hong Kong

Is Hong Kong following Beijing’s lead and ousting Western tech?

A task force is implementing domestic technology in the mainland Chinese public sector, while Hong Kong has no official related policy.

24 May 2026 - 11:00AM

Stocks

Opinion | Investors in AI-driven bubble risk forgetting painful lessons

AI-driven stock market hype is not independent of what is happening in the rest of the economy.

23 May 2026 - 9:30AMvideocam

A man walks past a digital stock display in Tokyo on May 7. Photo: EPA

Banking & finance

AI | AI infrastructure investment bubble unlikely to burst by 2027: Macquarie

Investors are piling money into AI technologies – but revenues still have a long way to catch up, Macquarie’s Viktor Shvets says.

19 May 2026 - 7:34PM

Millionaires, billionaires and trillionaires

US jury rules against Musk in OpenAI feud, finding lawsuit came too late

Jurors deliberate for less than two hours before tossing Elon Musk’s breach-of-contract claims against OpenAI and its founders.

19 May 2026 - 9:47AM

Artificial intelligence

Armed with Nvidia chips, UAE aims to build an AI bridge to the Global South

With its Opec era over, the Gulf state has big post-war ambitions for Africa and beyond, bolstered by elite Nvidia chip deliveries.

18 May 2026 - 3:40PMvideocam

The Dubai skyline featuring the Burj Khalifa. The UAE’s AI strategy is structured around deep, capital-intensive investments and the development and export of large language models to underserved markets. Photo: EPA-EFE

2026 Xi-Trump summits

Trump poured millions into tech giants seeking China deal, ethics filing shows

In the first quarter, Trump made at least nine trades in Nvidia, with transaction values ranging from US$1,001 to US$5 million.

15 May 2026 - 8:30PM

US President Donald Trump gestures as he departs Beijing Capital International Airport aboard Air Force One, in Beijing on Friday. Photo: Reuters

Science

Does China’s Jiuzhang 4.0 computer herald the age of quantum supremacy?

New programmable photonic quantum computing prototype completed a complex calculation in microseconds, developers say.

15 May 2026 - 4:23PM

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba, Tencent present a tale of two strategies for AI spending

Alibaba will focus its AI capex on cloud services, while Tencent is prioritising internal demand with its spending.

14 May 2026 - 9:15PM

Science

‘Basically a Chinese racket’: how China streaked ahead at a global AI conference

Mainland China accounted for 44 per cent of the top 50 institutions contributing to the ICLR in Rio de Janeiro, according to analysis.

14 May 2026 - 9:00AMvideocam

Mainland China’s Tsinghua University alone had 332 accepted papers, according to one analysis. Photo: European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems

Artificial intelligence

China deepens footprint at AI conference despite NeurIPS dispute, US tensions

Alibaba, ByteDance, other Chinese tech giants top paper submissions in conference, quelling worries over geopolitics impacting participation.

11 May 2026 - 10:00PM

Artificial intelligence

Alibaba brings chat-style shopping to Taobao, Qwen amid AI gateway push: source

E-commerce giant is integrating Qwen with Taobao and Tmall, enabling shoppers to use natural-language commands instead of keyword searches.

10 May 2026 - 6:54PM

ByteDance

ByteDance raises 2026 capex by at least 25% amid AI boom, sources say

ByteDance is allocating a proportionally larger budget to domestic AI chips to mitigate geopolitical risks and heed Beijing’s call.

9 May 2026 - 2:00PM

US-China relations

Exiting China market a ‘self-inflicted wound’ for US tech, think tank warns

ITIF argues that regional sales help finance domestic R&D and block local rivals, while warning that a full exit would be a self-inflicted wound to innovation leadership.

4 May 2026 - 9:00PMvideocam

Visitors take pictures and videos of a human-like robot head on display at the Humanoid Robots Industry Base in Beijing’s Shougang Park on April 28. Photo: AP

United States

US Pentagon signs AI deals with Google, Nvidia and SpaceX, focus on ‘lawful’ use

The deal comes even as some tech workers raise concerns about the use of AI for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.

2 May 2026 - 3:00PM

Artificial intelligence

Chinese firms face pressure on AI investments as US peers’ spending soars

Largest US companies on track for US$700 billion in AI capital expenditures this year, versus about US$105 billion in China.

30 Apr 2026 - 10:30PM

Millionaires, billionaires and trillionaires

Elon Musk’s trial against Sam Altman reveals power struggle for OpenAI

Musk, one of the original co-founders of OpenAI, is seeking US$150 billion in damages from the company and Microsoft, one of its largest investors.

27 Apr 2026 - 9:12PMvideocam

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman approached Musk about co-founding OpenAI in May 2015. Photo: TNS

Artificial intelligence

China’s DeepSeek adds expert chatbot mode ahead of much-awaited V4 release

The Hangzhou start-up’s latest chatbot update sparks speculation over whether the expert mode is linked to the long-delayed V4 model.

8 Apr 2026 - 6:36PM

The changes come ahead of the much-anticipated release of DeepSeek’s next-generation flagship model V4 this month. Photo: Reuters

Artificial intelligence

As AI race with US intensifies, Alibaba launches 10,000-card computing cluster

Cluster in Shaoguan powered by domestically developed Zhenwu chips latest evidence that China is doubling down on home-grown infrastructure.

8 Apr 2026 - 2:30PM

Artificial intelligence

China taps offshore wind, subsea data centres to ease AI computing bottleneck

The underwater data centre, located 10 kilometres off Shanghai’s eastern coast, was built by Shanghai HiCloud Technology.

8 Apr 2026 - 7:30AM

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Microsoft

AI boom sparks Kingboard subsidiary’s US$1.5b stake sale to ramp up PCB capacity

AI server backlogs and supply chain strains push Kingboard to tap markets and expand circuit board output.

SpaceX vaults past Amazon’s market value, briefly topping Microsoft

Bill Gates says Epstein blackmailed him using knowledge of his affairs

Microsoft cuts hundreds of mainland cloud jobs, as China, US tighten data laws

The firm is laying off some employees at its cloud unit amid ongoing restrictions on cross-border data flows between the two countries.

No need for ‘AI Iron Curtain’, China’s Communist Party mouthpiece says

People’s Daily says China and US should work together to advance the development and governance of artificial intelligence.

.css-1pcrwvc{color:#2aa191;}Letters | Is ranking Hong Kong’s civil servants on a curve a good idea?

Readers discuss a proposed ranking system for the civil service, opportunities in Central Asia, and the Ebola threat.

Forza Horizon 6 brings the car racing franchise to Japan and it is a winner

Forza Horizon took racing simulation games from circuits into the ‘real world’ and Horizon 6, set in Japan, is one of the best editions yet.

US banks roll out American AI in Hong Kong despite geopolitical tensions

US AI companies have restricted access for users in Hong Kong and mainland China, forcing banks to navigate a compliance minefield.

Alibaba AI beats Google and OpenAI in global coding rankings

The Chinese tech giant is the only non-US firm to crack the top five in Code Arena’s latest leaderboard.

Is Hong Kong following Beijing’s lead and ousting Western tech?

A task force is implementing domestic technology in the mainland Chinese public sector, while Hong Kong has no official related policy.

Opinion | Investors in AI-driven bubble risk forgetting painful lessons

AI-driven stock market hype is not independent of what is happening in the rest of the economy.

.css-1f6sr3w{color:#727272;}AI | AI infrastructure investment bubble unlikely to burst by 2027: Macquarie

Investors are piling money into AI technologies – but revenues still have a long way to catch up, Macquarie’s Viktor Shvets says.

US jury rules against Musk in OpenAI feud, finding lawsuit came too late

Jurors deliberate for less than two hours before tossing Elon Musk’s breach-of-contract claims against OpenAI and its founders.

Armed with Nvidia chips, UAE aims to build an AI bridge to the Global South

With its Opec era over, the Gulf state has big post-war ambitions for Africa and beyond, bolstered by elite Nvidia chip deliveries.

Trump poured millions into tech giants seeking China deal, ethics filing shows

In the first quarter, Trump made at least nine trades in Nvidia, with transaction values ranging from US$1,001 to US$5 million.

Does China’s Jiuzhang 4.0 computer herald the age of quantum supremacy?

New programmable photonic quantum computing prototype completed a complex calculation in microseconds, developers say.

Alibaba, Tencent present a tale of two strategies for AI spending

Alibaba will focus its AI capex on cloud services, while Tencent is prioritising internal demand with its spending.

‘Basically a Chinese racket’: how China streaked ahead at a global AI conference

Mainland China accounted for 44 per cent of the top 50 institutions contributing to the ICLR in Rio de Janeiro, according to analysis.

China deepens footprint at AI conference despite NeurIPS dispute, US tensions

Alibaba, ByteDance, other Chinese tech giants top paper submissions in conference, quelling worries over geopolitics impacting participation.

Alibaba brings chat-style shopping to Taobao, Qwen amid AI gateway push: source

E-commerce giant is integrating Qwen with Taobao and Tmall, enabling shoppers to use natural-language commands instead of keyword searches.

ByteDance raises 2026 capex by at least 25% amid AI boom, sources say

ByteDance is allocating a proportionally larger budget to domestic AI chips to mitigate geopolitical risks and heed Beijing’s call.

Exiting China market a ‘self-inflicted wound’ for US tech, think tank warns

ITIF argues that regional sales help finance domestic R&D and block local rivals, while warning that a full exit would be a self-inflicted wound to innovation leadership.

US Pentagon signs AI deals with Google, Nvidia and SpaceX, focus on ‘lawful’ use

The deal comes even as some tech workers raise concerns about the use of AI for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance.

Chinese firms face pressure on AI investments as US peers’ spending soars

Largest US companies on track for US$700 billion in AI capital expenditures this year, versus about US$105 billion in China.

Elon Musk’s trial against Sam Altman reveals power struggle for OpenAI

Musk, one of the original co-founders of OpenAI, is seeking US$150 billion in damages from the company and Microsoft, one of its largest investors.

China’s DeepSeek adds expert chatbot mode ahead of much-awaited V4 release

The Hangzhou start-up’s latest chatbot update sparks speculation over whether the expert mode is linked to the long-delayed V4 model.

As AI race with US intensifies, Alibaba launches 10,000-card computing cluster

Cluster in Shaoguan powered by domestically developed Zhenwu chips latest evidence that China is doubling down on home-grown infrastructure.

China taps offshore wind, subsea data centres to ease AI computing bottleneck

The underwater data centre, located 10 kilometres off Shanghai’s eastern coast, was built by Shanghai HiCloud Technology.

Letters | Is ranking Hong Kong’s civil servants on a curve a good idea?

AI | AI infrastructure investment bubble unlikely to burst by 2027: Macquarie