Author: IQ TIMES MEDIA

Microsoft expects headcount to decrease in coming quarters, CFO Amy Hood said during an earnings conference call with analysts on Wednesday. Loading audio narration… “We continue to evolve how we operate to increase our pace and agility, and therefore we expect headcount will decrease year over year,” Hood said.She was discussing the outlook for Microsoft’s next fiscal year, which starts in July and runs through June 2027.Before the call, Hood sent out an internal memo to employees touting “increased pace” and “tighter, more accountable squads” amid recent organizational changes.Microsoft has cut thousands of jobs in recent quarters. The CFO’s comments…

Google has so far not put ads in its Gemini AI app, but it’s not ruling it out. Loading audio narration… Google is currently focusing on ads in AI Mode — its AI-powered, conversational version of Search — but this could eventually carry over to the standalone Gemini app, chief business officer Philipp Schindler said on Wednesday’s earnings call.”Our focus right now is on AI Mode, but it’s fair to say that we really believe a format that works well in AI mode would transfer successfully to Gemini app,” Schindler said.In addition to AI Mode, Google also has some ads…

Google Cloud, the business under parent company Alphabet that provides enterprise AI solutions, had a blowout first quarter, with revenues topping $20 billion for the time, a 63% increase from the same period last year. However, investors on the company’s earnings call expressed concern about the constraints surrounding the business and how Google decides to allocate cloud capacity. In the first quarter of 2026, the company said its cloud growth was driven by strong performance in the Google Cloud Platform, which grew at a higher rate than the Google Cloud division’s overall revenue growth. (The Cloud division includes a variety…

“What the hell is going on?” Loading audio narration… That’s what Elon Musk told a federal California jury Wednesday he texted Sam Altman after learning in early 2023 that tech giant Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI.Musk, who cofounded OpenAI with Altman more than a decade ago, said he blasted the move in the text as a “bait-and-switch.”The Tesla and SpaceX CEO made the comments during his second day on the witness stand in his blockbuster civil trial over OpenAI’s for-profit transition from a nonprofit research lab. He is seeking to convince the jury that OpenAI and other defendants were…

Google has added another 25 million paid subscriptions to its services over the past quarter, parent company Alphabet announced during its first-quarter earnings report on Wednesday. The company said it now has 350 million paid subscriptions across its services, up from 325 million in Q4 2025, with YouTube and Google One — its cloud storage and subscription service — plans driving the recent growth. The earnings report didn’t highlight the number of Gemini subscribers or its monthly active users. But access to advanced Gemini features is now bundled in with those Google One plans, which are growing. The lack of…

Apple is gearing up to report earnings for its fiscal second quarter on Thursday, and it’ll be the first report since Tim Cook announced he would step down as CEO later this year. Loading audio narration… John Ternus was announced as Cook’s successor. As Apple stock soared roughly 1,946% during Cook’s time as CEO, investors want to know how he plans to ensure growth continues when he takes over. Apple is expected to post $109.5 billion in revenue with adjusted earnings per share of $1.92. Analysts have noted that they expect ongoing iPhone demand to spur growth in the coming…

AI-generated video has gone from novelty to creative tool almost overnight, and Runway has a front row seat to the shift. The New York-based company has raised close to $860 million at a $5.3 billion valuation, and its models are going toe-to-toe with the most well-funded labs in the world, including Google and OpenAI.   The technology goes way beyond making videos: Runway is now pushing into general world models with applications in gaming, robotics, and maybe something closer to general intelligence.  On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, host Rebecca Bellan sits down with Runway co-founder and CEO Cristóbal Valenzuela to talk about where video generation goes from…

Parallel Web Systems, the AI agent-tool startup founded by former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal, has raised a $100 million Series B at a $2 billion valuation led by Sequoia. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins, Index Ventures, Khosla Ventures, First Round Capital, Spark Capital, and Terrain Capital also participated, the company said. This raise comes just five months after the startup announced its $100 million Series A at a $740 million valuation led by Kleiner and Index, and brings the total capital it raised to $230 million. Parallel offers a suite of web search and research APIs specifically for AI agents and…

BOSTON (AP) — Federal investigators say they believe the man who carried out a mass shooting at Brown University and later killed a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor did not act randomly.Instead, former Brown student Claudio Neves Valente, 48, appeared to target places and people for what they represented in his own life — institutions and individuals he associated with personal failure, missed opportunity and perceived injustice.In a detailed behavioral assessment released Wednesday, the FBI said Neves Valente, a Portuguese national, spent years planning the attack in isolation before killing two students and wounding nine others inside an engineering building…

Newly-revealed courtroom exhibits in the blockbuster case between Elon Musk and Sam Altman show how OpenAI nearly ended up with a different name — one intended as a jab at an AI rival. Loading audio narration… Musk and Altman, along with others, founded OpenAI in December 2015 as a nonprofit AI research lab.A November 2015 email exchange between the two shows how Musk pitched calling the firm “Freemind,” framing the name as “partly an intentional philosophical counter” to Google’s DeepMind AI lab.”Least bad name I have thought of so far is Freemind. Conveys the sense that we are trying to…