Microsoft lost $357 billion in market cap in earnings plunge

In a historic single-day drop, Microsoft's stock fell ~10% on January 29, 2026—its steepest decline since March 2020. The sell-off wiped out $357 billion in market value, closing its cap at $3.22 trillion.

Key drivers from the earnings report:

· Azure cloud growth of 39% slightly missed estimates.
· Weak revenue guidance for the Windows-led PC segment.
· CFO Amy Hood noted AI compute capacity was prioritized for internal projects like Microsoft 365 Copilot over customer data center supply.

Analysts are split: some urge faster data center build-out, while others defend the long-term strategy, viewing capacity constraints as temporary.

The reaction underscores market nerves about execution in the AI race, even as leadership stresses focus on sustainable growth over short-term performance.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/29/microsoft-market-cap-earnings.html

#Microsoft #StockMarket #Earnings #Investing #CloudComputing #Azure #AI #BusinessNews #Finance #Tech

Microsoft lost $357 billion in market cap in earnings plunge

In a historic single-day drop, Microsoft's stock fell ~10% on January 29, 2026—its steepest decline since March 2020. The sell-off wiped out $357 billion in market value, closing its cap at $3.22 trillion.

Key drivers from the earnings report:

· Azure cloud growth of 39% slightly missed estimates.
· Weak revenue guidance for the Windows-led PC segment.
· CFO Amy Hood noted AI compute capacity was prioritized for internal projects like Microsoft 365 Copilot over customer data center supply.

Analysts are split: some urge faster data center build-out, while others defend the long-term strategy, viewing capacity constraints as temporary.

The reaction underscores market nerves about execution in the AI race, even as leadership stresses focus on sustainable growth over short-term performance.
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/29/microsoft-market-cap-earnings.html

#Microsoft #StockMarket #Earnings #Investing #CloudComputing #Azure #AI #BusinessNews #Finance #Tech

How #ICE Already Knows Who #Minneapolis #Protesters Are
ICE uses two #facialrecognition programs one made #tech company #ClearviewAI and #MobileFortify. ICE is also using #cellphone and #socialmedia tools to monitor people’s activity and hack into phones. Agents are tapping into database, built by #Palantir, combines government and commercial data to identify real-time locations for individuals they are pursuing, current and former officials said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/technology/tech-ice-facial-recognition-palantir.html
https://archive.ph/A32Ao

How #ICE Already Knows Who #Minneapolis #Protesters Are
ICE uses two #facialrecognition programs one made #tech company #ClearviewAI and #MobileFortify. ICE is also using #cellphone and #socialmedia tools to monitor people’s activity and hack into phones. Agents are tapping into database, built by #Palantir, combines government and commercial data to identify real-time locations for individuals they are pursuing, current and former officials said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/technology/tech-ice-facial-recognition-palantir.html
https://archive.ph/A32Ao

We're live!

#web #tech #hosting #selfhosting #education #opensource #edtech #lamp #cloud #containers

https://reclaim.tv

We're live!

#web #tech #hosting #selfhosting #education #opensource #edtech #lamp #cloud #containers

https://reclaim.tv

Pro-AI super PAC Leading the Future has raised more than $125 million to try to shape the 2026 U.S. midterms and the future of federal AI regulation.

@axios reports: "States are racing ahead with regulating AI, while companies are looking to Washington to set a single, industry-friendly federal standard."

https://flip.it/CyZX7g

#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #USPolitics #Tech

Anthropic’s secret to building a better AI assistant might be treating Claude like it has a soul. No one really believes it has a soul, though, right? @ArsTechnica explores:

https://flip.it/uClTSD

#Tech #AI #Anthropic #Claude #Technology #ArtificialIntelligence

The French government is ditching U.S. videoconferencing services such as Zoom. Over the next year, civil servants will start using an open-source videoconferencing platform called Visio. This is part of a family of programs, Suite Numérique, designed to eventually replace all collaboration tools used by the French administration. Here's more from ZDNET.

https://flip.it/UfRUJD

#France #Technology #Tech #DigitalSovereignty

@pluralistic > Disenshittification Nation (29 Jan 2026):

Like all the best Americans, I am a Canadian, and while I have lived abroad for more than two decades, I flatter myself that I am still steeped in our folkways, and so as is traditional at events like this, I would like to begin by apologising... I'm sorry... I'm really sorry... I know that at a tech event, you expect to hear from a speaker who will come up and tell you how to lose hundreds of billions of dollars building data-centres for the money-losingest technology in human history, a technology so wildly defective that we've had to come up with new, exotic words to describe its defects, like "hallucination." A technology that will never recoup the capex already firehosed on – let alone the trillions committed to it – and whose only possible path to glory is to somehow get so good that it makes millions of people unemployed... But don't worry: you can't make the word-guessing program into a "superintelligence" by shoveling more words into it...

#artificialTechnology #enshittification #disenshittification #counterdisruption #datacenters #workers #laborNews #tech #techNews #dmca #techHistory

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ottawa

@pluralistic > Disenshittification Nation (29 Jan 2026):

Like all the best Americans, I am a Canadian, and while I have lived abroad for more than two decades, I flatter myself that I am still steeped in our folkways, and so as is traditional at events like this, I would like to begin by apologising... I'm sorry... I'm really sorry... I know that at a tech event, you expect to hear from a speaker who will come up and tell you how to lose hundreds of billions of dollars building data-centres for the money-losingest technology in human history, a technology so wildly defective that we've had to come up with new, exotic words to describe its defects, like "hallucination." A technology that will never recoup the capex already firehosed on – let alone the trillions committed to it – and whose only possible path to glory is to somehow get so good that it makes millions of people unemployed... But don't worry: you can't make the word-guessing program into a "superintelligence" by shoveling more words into it...

#artificialTechnology #enshittification #disenshittification #counterdisruption #datacenters #workers #laborNews #tech #techNews #dmca #techHistory

https://pluralistic.net/2026/01/29/post-american-canada/#ottawa

Mark Zuckerberg gets green light from Wall Street to keep pouring money into AI.

From CNBC: "Although investors have previously expressed concern about Meta’s AI spending spree, they took comfort in the company’s latest results, which were driven by online ads."

https://flip.it/0pQueL

#Meta #AI #Zuckerberg #ArtificialIntelligence #Tech

"IG is a drug." Documents that show Meta seemingly bragging that "teens can't switch off from Instagram even if they want to" may prove damning for the platform in a social media addiction trial that could cost them and YouTube — also a subject of the lawsuit — billions. Snapchat and TikTok were originally named too, but both have settled. Here's more from @arstechnica.

https://flip.it/pmcRQv

#SocialMedia #SocialMediaAddiction #Instagram #Meta #USLaw #Technology #Tech

Amazon’s latest 16,000 cuts sit on top of roughly 73,000 corporate roles already eliminated since 2022, as the company leans harder into AI and automation.

Amazon cuts 16,000 more corporate jobs while pouring billions into AI and automation, after roughly 27,000 cuts in 2022–23 and another 14,000 last year – about 73,000 white‑collar roles erased in the name of “efficiency.”

Meta slashed about 11,000 jobs in 2022 and another 10,000 in 2023 in its earlier “year of efficiency” pivot toward AI and infrastructure (excluding the latest 2026 Reality Labs / metaverse layoffs), while also pruning several hundred AI research roles as it refocuses on “superintelligence.”

Accenture has dumped more than 11,000 people in a global restructuring explicitly framed around AI, exiting staff they say can’t be “reskilled” for the new model.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amazon-cuts-16000-jobs-artificial-intelligence-rcna256280
#Amazon #Layoffs #AI #FutureOfWork #Tech #Labour #Automation #Inequality #Accenture #Meta

Amazon’s latest 16,000 cuts sit on top of roughly 73,000 corporate roles already eliminated since 2022, as the company leans harder into AI and automation.

Amazon cuts 16,000 more corporate jobs while pouring billions into AI and automation, after roughly 27,000 cuts in 2022–23 and another 14,000 last year – about 73,000 white‑collar roles erased in the name of “efficiency.”

Meta slashed about 11,000 jobs in 2022 and another 10,000 in 2023 in its earlier “year of efficiency” pivot toward AI and infrastructure (excluding the latest 2026 Reality Labs / metaverse layoffs), while also pruning several hundred AI research roles as it refocuses on “superintelligence.”

Accenture has dumped more than 11,000 people in a global restructuring explicitly framed around AI, exiting staff they say can’t be “reskilled” for the new model.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/amazon-cuts-16000-jobs-artificial-intelligence-rcna256280
#Amazon #Layoffs #AI #FutureOfWork #Tech #Labour #Automation #Inequality #Accenture #Meta

Some members of the international games development community are staying away from the Game Developers Conference (GDC), set to take place in March, because of the political climate in the U.S. @Aftermath's Luke Plunkett spoke to nine past attendees about exactly why they've decided to give it a miss: Concerns for their personal safety, as well as a desire not to support anything taking place in the U.S.

https://flip.it/dHAR1X

#Technology #Tech #GDC #GameDevelopersConference #VideoGames #TrumpAdministration

Some members of the international games development community are staying away from the Game Developers Conference (GDC), set to take place in March, because of the political climate in the U.S. @Aftermath's Luke Plunkett spoke to nine past attendees about exactly why they've decided to give it a miss: Concerns for their personal safety, as well as a desire not to support anything taking place in the U.S.

https://flip.it/dHAR1X

#Technology #Tech #GDC #GameDevelopersConference #VideoGames #TrumpAdministration

As the world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day, experts say that social networks are being overrun with AI-generated content about the Holocaust, some of it exploiting the horrors of Nazi crimes for clickbait, some seeking to deny or trivialize them. Jens-Christian Wagner, director of the foundation that manages the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora memorials, points to images of "well-fed prisoners, meant to suggest that conditions in concentration camps weren't really that bad." Here's more from AFP News.

https://flip.it/KCpoPk

#Technology #Tech #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #HolocaustRemembranceDay

Meta, TikTok and YouTube face landmark U.S. trial over youth addiction claims.

@AssociatedPress reports: "At the core of the case is a 19-year-old identified only by the initials 'KGM,' whose case could determine how thousands of other, similar lawsuits against social media companies will play out."

https://flip.it/Bt.zTg

#SocialMedia #Tech #Meta #TikTok #YouTube

This is an essential read from @pluralistic – well worth your time to understand the points he’s making fully as he’s spot on and the excellent analogies will make it easier for you to discuss the topic with others.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2026/jan/18/tech-ai-bubble-burst-reverse-centaur

#AI #capitalism #neoliberalism #tech #reverseCentaur