On April 23, Salesforce and Slack filed a lawsuit against Microsoft in London’s High Court, accusing the company of anticompetitive practices related to its Microsoft Teams app.

Speaking to Reuters, a Salesforce spokesperson indicated that "Microsoft's practices harmed ⁠competition, using tying and bundling of Teams to ​limit customer choice."

Per Salesforce's lawsuit, Microsoft bundling Teams with its Office suite is described as a calculated move designed to limit customer choice and restrict fair competition in the workplace collaboration market.

A Microsoft spokesperson dismissed Salesforce's claims, further indicating that the antitrust case against it lacked merit:

"Salesforce’s complaint lacks merit, and we’ll make our case before the Court in due course. Slack's lackluster growth, compared to Zoom and Teams, was based on inferior capabilities when COVID-19 hit in ​2020, and had nothing to do with Microsoft." (via Salesforce Ben)

This isn’t the first time Salesforce has raised concerns about Microsoft’s business practices. Back in 2020, Slack filed a complaint with the European Commission, accusing Microsoft of abusing its market dominance by bundling Teams with its Office suite to stifle competition.

The complain further alleged that millions were forced to install Microsoft Teams without the ability to remove it. However, Microsoft dismissed the allegations, arguing that Slack’s struggles originated from its lack of integrated video‑conferencing features rather than any anticompetitive behavior.

But Microsoft caved to antitrust regulatory pressure, making some changes...

In 2025, Microsoft unbundled Teams from Office 365 in an attempt to dodge EU antitrust fines. For context, the European Commission launched a formal investigation into Microsoft for bundling Teams with Office 365 in 2023.

Microsoft made several commitments to the European Commission, including drastic changes in pricing for its core services. For context, it committed to offering Office 365 and Microsoft 365 without Teams at a lower cost, at around $2.20 (€2) less per user each month. As such, it started offering Teams as a standalone service for about $5.50 (€5) per user per month.

The tech giant also committed to improving how Teams works with competing platforms, making it easier for rival apps to integrate with Teams and other Microsoft services.

This is a developing story. I'll keep tabs on it as it unfolds and equally keep updated as new information becomes available.

Elsewhere, Microsoft is also facing a separate class‑action lawsuit, alleging that it set wholesale prices for Windows Server software higher on rival cloud platforms than on its own Azure service.

Do you think Microsoft is engaging in anticompetitive business practices by bundling Teams with its Office suite? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

Top AI research labs have released sophisticated AI models and subsequent chatbots to cement their brand names in the ever-evolving landscape, which is honestly becoming difficult to keep up with. However, users often lodge complaints about these offerings, citing hallucinations or outrightly wrong responses to queries.

A research paper by Microsoft Research and Salesforce analyzed 200,000+ AI conversations from the most advanced Large Language Models (LLMs), including GPT-4.1, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Claude 3.7 Sonnet, o3, DeepSeek R1, and Llama 4, and revealed that these tools often get "lost in conversation" when tasks are broken into a natural, multi-turn conversation (via NeuroNad).

For context, AI models like GPT-4.1 and Gemini 2.5 Pro achieve 90% success rates with single prompts. However, their performance takes a significant hit, dropping to approximately 65% during lengthier, back-and-forth conversations.

Generative AI has seemingly turned into a buzzword in the tech industry; it's what everyone in the business is talking about right now. The technology is gaining widespread adoption worldwide despite claims that it's a bubble on the verge of bursting.

In 2024, Microsoft claimed that ChatGPT wasn't better than Copilot AI. The company indicated that users weren't using the product as intended, while pointing the finger at poor prompt engineering skills.

This recent study builds on this premise, as LLMs tend to deliver better results in single-turn conversations than in multi-turn ones. It further disclosed that the clear disparity in performance doesn't mean that the model has miraculously become dumber.

The researchers detail that the models' aptitude only decreased by 15%, but their unreliability skyrocketed by 112%. So what happened here exactly? The researchers indicated that AI models tend to suffer from premature generation, where they'd attempt to provide a solution for your query even before you're done with the explanation.

Perhaps more interestingly, the model tends to use its initial response as its basis for its answer for subsequent questions, even if it was wrong. What's more, the researchers also discovered another phenomenon — answer bloat.

Per the study, the models' answers and responses became 20% to 300% longer when engaged in multi-turn conversations. The researchers established that longer responses to queries introduced more assumptions and hallucinations, which were concerningly used as permanent context in the conversation.

While models like OpenAI’s o3 and DeepSeek R1 ship with extra thinking tokens, they weren't able to wiggle themselves out of the bizarre situation.

AI's reliability is on shaky grounds when too many variables are in the equation

It's becoming apparent that AI has yet to hit its prime-time with critical issues like its unreliability when engaged in a multi-turn conversation. Yet, users' patterns for services like Google are rapidly changing, especially with tools like Google AI Overviews entering the fold.

Ditching traditional and conventional search engines like Google search for AI-powered tools is a great risk, as the information generated might be assumed to be accurate.

What worries you most about AI chatbots in real conversations? Share your thoughts with me in the comments.

Join us on Reddit at r/WindowsCentral to share your insights and discuss our latest news, reviews, and more.

At the beginning of this year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff indicated that the company was seriously debating hiring software engineers in 2025. Consequently, the executive revealed that the tech firm was using AI to do up to 50% of its work, citing incredible productivity gains due to agentic AIs.

During a recent episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, Benioff revealed that AI is on course to replace humans at the workplace, specifically indicating that the technology is helping bolster the company's sales by augmenting the customer support division, prompting it to cut support staff from 9,000 to 5,000 (via Business Insider).

For context, Salesforce leverages AI agents to split complex tasks into smaller steps. As such, each agent takes on a specific task with the sole purpose of meeting set objectives. Benioff reiterated that the integration of AI agents into the company's workflow has bolstered productivity.

According to Marc Benioff:

"There were more than 100 million leads that we have not called back at Salesforce in the last 26 years because we have not had enough people. But we now have an agentic sales that is calling back every person that contacts us."

However, the executive highlights the importance of humans in the company. Benioff admitted that humans are still important at the workplace because AI agents sometime fall short of expectations, and might require human intervention when they are unable to handle certain tasks:

"It's not any different than you're in your Tesla and all of a sudden it's self-driving and goes, 'Oh, I don't know actually know what's happening, you take over,' and that's kind of the same thing."

Marc Benioff is skeptical about AGI

Most companies venturing into the AI space are seemingly chasing AGI (artificial general intelligence), but over the years, the term has turned into a buzzword with a different meaning every time someone is talking about it. In simpler terms, it refers to a kind of AI system that surpasses human cognitive capabilities.

While companies like Microsoft and OpenAI are heavily invested in the category, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is all‑in on AI but remains highly skeptical of the hype and of anyone using the term ‘AGI.’ While recently speaking to Harry Stebbings on the 20VC podcast, Benioff indicated:

"You're talking to somebody who is extremely suspect if anybody uses those initials, 'AGI.' I think that we have all been sold hypnosis around what's about to happen with AI."

Benioff believes that a lot needs to be done for the coveted AGI benchmark to be achieved, but he didn't necessarily rule out the possibility of it happening one day.

“I just realize that isn’t the state of technology today. It’s not a person, and it’s not intelligent, and it’s not conscious."

He further indicated that there's no AI system that people have interacted with do far that comes close to a theoretical bar showing consciousness or human-level intelligence.

This news comes after Google's DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis indicated that AGI is on its way, further warning that society isn't ready to take on what it entails, He claimed that the prospects keep him up at night.

On the flip side, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is seemingly less concerned about AGI, but delivering real impact that could lead to positive change in society while OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has shifted focus to self-replication.

Generative AI is revolutionizing our lives across almost all areas, including medicine, entertainment, computing, and plenty more. However, the technology also ships with critical challenges like existential doom and augmenting jobs using AI. Salesforce, a key player in the AI landscape, is already using AI to automate workloads.

While in a recent interview with Bloomberg, CEO Marc Benioff revealed that AI is doing up to 50% of the work at Salesforce (via CNBC):

“All of us have to get our head around this idea that AI could do things, that before, we were doing, and we can move on to do higher-value work.”

This news doesn't entirely come as a surprise, as Benioff previously indicated that Salesforce is "seriously debating" hiring engineers in 2025.

Job security is among the major concerns riddling most people as AI becomes more prevalent and gains broad adoption. Last year, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati indicated that AI would create new job opportunities while simultaneously killing some professions:

"Some creative jobs maybe will go away. But maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place — you know, if the content that comes out of it is not very high quality."

AI's razor-sharp cut on jobs

Interestingly, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates seemingly echoed similar sentiments, claiming that AI will replace humans for most things. However, he indicated that humans will have control over the narrative, preserving certain tasks for themselves. He joked that no one would like to watch computers playing baseball.

NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang predicted that coding might already be dead in the water with the broad adoption of AI. He recommended that the future generation should chase down other future-proof career paths, including biology, farming, and manufacturing.

However, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei claims that AI could potentially cut up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs, leaving Gen Z out of work:

"We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming. It's a very strange set of dynamics, where we're saying: 'You should be worried about where the technology we're building is going.'"

Bill Gates claimed that biologists, energy experts, and coders would survive the brutal AI revolution because the fields are too complex to fully augment using AI.

However, AI isn't entirely bad. Microsoft's special June Work Trend Index report revealed that most employees are seemingly trapped in the infinite workday, forcing them to carry work home with little regard for official work hours.

Most employees who took part in the survey claimed that Sundays feel like "the new Monday" as they are constantly checking their emails and Microsoft Teams in preparation for the next day.

The report further revealed that AI could be leveraged to help employees strike a healthy work-life balance, by throwing mundane and repetitive tasks to AI, allowing sufficient time to handle more complex tasks.

"By deploying AI and agents to streamline low-value tasks—status meetings, routine reports, admin churn—leaders can reclaim time for what moves the business: deep work, fast decisions, and focused execution."

It'll be interesting to see if corporations hop onto the AI bandwagon and deploy the technology across their workflows. It will also be interesting to see its overall impact on the workforce and whether it will create new opportunities for the professionals it is potentially set to replace.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is well-known for not mincing his words, especially when criticizing Microsoft and throwing jabs at the company's AI efforts. Over the past few months, the executive has referred to Copilot as the new Microsoft Clippy, claiming it doesn't deliver value.

Benioff has also branded Microsoft as an "OpenAI reseller," claiming the tech giant repackaged ChatGPT as Copilot and presented it to consumers as a different product. Recently, the executive appeared in a podcast interview with SaaStr CEO Jason Lemkin.

Marc Benioff claimed that Microsoft did "horrible things" to Slack before Salesforce acquired the platform between 2020 and 2021 for approximately $27 billion. Interestingly, Microsoft had also shown interest in acquiring Slack for $8 billion, but later pulled the plug in a bit to focus more on Skype (RIP) and the launch of Teams.

According to Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff:

"You can see the horrible things that Microsoft did to Slack before we bought it. That was pretty bad and they were running their playbook and did a lot of dark stuff. And it's all gotten written up in an EU complaint that Slack made before we bought them."

Microsoft has a long-standing rivalry with Slack. The messaging platform accused Microsoft of using anti-competitive techniques to maintain its dominance across organizations, including bundling Teams into its Microsoft Office 365 suite.

However, Microsoft was forced to unbundle Teams from Office 365 globally after Slack filed a complaint with the EU Commission. Teams is now available for new customers as a standalone app for $5.25, whereas Office packages without Teams range between $7.75 and $54.75.

Marc Benioff further indicated that Microsoft's treatment of Slack was "pretty nasty." He claimed that the company often employs a similar playbook to gain a competitive advantage over its rivals while referencing "browser wars" with Netscape and Internet Explorer in the late 1990s.

"That playbook should get ripped up and thrown away," continued Benioff.

Marc Benioff doesn't think Microsoft will be in OpenAI's future

Over the past few months, multiple reports and speculations have surfaced online suggesting that Microsoft's multi-billion-dollar partnership with OpenAI might be fraying. It all started when OpenAI unveiled its $500 billion Stargate project alongside SoftBank, designed to facilitate the construction of data centers across the United States.

The ChatGPT maker had previously been spotted complaining that Microsoft doesn't meet its cloud computing needs, shifting blame to the tech giant if one of its rivals hit the AGI benchmark first. Consequently, Microsoft lost its exclusive cloud provider status but retains the right of refusal to OpenAI's projects.

At the same time, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff predicted that Microsoft won't use OpenAI in the future. Interestingly, Microsoft has seemingly taken a back seat in its partnership with OpenAI and even started developing in-house AI models, emancipating itself from an overdependence and reliance on OpenAI.

While speaking to IT Pro, Microsoft confirmed that OpenAI “continues to be our partner on frontier models.” It will be interesting to see how Microsoft and OpenAI's partnership pans out, especially after the former officially listed the ChatGPT maker as a competitor in search and AI.

As every major tech company grapples to claim a stake in the ever-evolving AI landscape, it's increasingly becoming difficult to determine who will be the winner (or if there will be one anyway).

So far, Microsoft, OpenAI, and Anthropic have shown great promise in the space. Even Apple with its delayed strategy briefly scaled to the top, becoming the world's most valuable company ahead of Microsoft and NVIDIA with over $3 trillion in market valuation.

Over the past few months, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has shared interesting insights about Microsoft's AI efforts. The executive claimed Microsoft has done a"tremendous disservice" to the industry while referring to Copilot as the new Microsoft Clippy, further suggesting it doesn't work or deliver value.

More recently, Salesforce's CEO was recently featured in an interview with Motley Fool host Dylan Lewis, discussing Agentic AI and the company's next chapter. The interview kicked off with Benioff indicating that Agentforce isn't the company's "first AI rodeo."

According to Benioff:

"We've been doing AI for more than a decade at Salesforce, predictive AI, machine learning, machine intelligence. Our Einstein platform is probably the largest most important enterprise platform for AI in the world. We deliver about a trillion enterprise AI transactions every single week. The generative revolution has just been incredible. What we've seen happening with these large language models over the last two years is really astonishing."

Salesforce touts AI lead over Microsoft

As you'd expect, the executive didn't pull any punches to criticize Microsoft's AI efforts. "But I think for a lot of our customers, they've been very disappointed with a lot of the solutions that have been given them or even shoved at them," Benioff added. "Even Microsoft has really disappointed so many of our customers with what they call Copilot."

The executive outlined that the company is following a different approach with Agentforce. He further indicated that it helps develop the largest and most important transformation of the entire tech industry — touting it as the digital labor revolution.

Salesforce's AI efforts are seemingly turning the company into a profitable venture:

"We've never seen a product or technology take off at this level. We just reported our quarterly results. As you know, we just had our first $10 billion quarter. We're the second largest software company in the world behind Microsoft, and the fastest-growing product that we have in our product line is Agentforce. Now, we probably did about 5,000 different types of Agentforce transactions in the quarter, 3,000 of which were paid transactions, and we did about nine digits in total contract value in Agentforce."

The executive outlined how Agentforce is gaining broad adoption across the world. It supports consumers by making work easier as they navigate the internet, researching and shopping for stuff.

Salesforce CEO admits they are not the only ones exploring new and innovative feats in the AI space. However, the executive says Salesforce stands out with its products, claiming it has transformed and changed the conversation.

Benioff suggested Microsoft was in "panic mode" after announcing its plan to add support for creating autonomous agents to Copilot Studio, potentially giving Salesforce's Agentforce a run for its money following Benioff's comments. He claimed Copilot is a flop because Microsoft lacks the data to create real corporate intelligence while touting Agentforce's excellence in the field.

Aside from Salesforce's AI efforts, Benioff also commented about the company's conundrum about hiring software engineers in 2025. While the executive didn't outrightly disclose the company's plans to replace software engineers with AI, he admitted that the technology helped enhance productivity at work and boosted revenue.

Microsoft Chief Communication Officer Frank X. Shaw recently addressed Benioff's jabs toward the software giant, claiming they are "all about marketing, less about truth or substance." Shaw further claimed that Marc doesn't know what he's talking about.

The executive echoed Microsoft CVP of Business & Industry Charles Lamanna's sentiments about the company's success in the AI landscape/ For context, over "100,000 organizations" had used Copilot Studio to create AI agents by October 2024.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is no stranger to controversy, especially when throwing shade and lethal jabs at Microsoft's AI efforts.

This happened in the most recent episode following the company's earnings report. Contrary to expectations, Salesforce posted weaker-than-expected quarterly revenue.

For context, the company earned $2.78 in adjusted earnings per share, 17 cents above the consensus among financial analysts. However, it reported $9.99 billion in revenue, a tad short of the expected $10.04 billion.

Salesforce's revenue rose by 7.6% compared to the previous year, and net income increased to $1.71 billion from $1.45 billion.

The company's top category of subscription and support revenue was service, at $2.33 billion, an 8% increase. It also generated $2.13 billion in revenue via its sales category.

It's worth noting that the company unveiled its Agentforce AI-powered tech during the quarter, which is seemingly turning into a lucrative business.

Salesforce claims it has completed up to 3,000 paid Agentforce deals since October, with the AI agent participating in 380,000 conversations through its help website.

Perhaps more interestingly, human intervention was only required in 2% of the cases. According to Salesforce's CEO:

"A lot of other vendors are talking about their agent capabilities, but few are able to show that they've got this really running at scale."

To that end, Benioff foresees better growth in the forthcoming months across the company's portfolio and services.

Salesforce CEO struggles to establish profit returns in Microsoft's multi-billion dollar AI investments

While Marc Benioff promises Salesforce will have "a great year," he seemingly expressed concern over the multi-billion dollar bets in the AI landscape by companies like Microsoft and whether they translated to sizable returns and profits (via Business Insider).

Salesforce's CEO blatantly indicated that the company wasn't investing resources into exorbitant AI projects that didn't guarantee worthwhile profits.

During the earnings call, the CEO highlighted that the company was embracing a different business model and sticking to its existing tech stack by augmenting its services using AI.

Benioff indicated that Salesforce plans to use infrastructure investments made by others to deliver the "digital labor revolution."

The executive's sentiments come at a crucial time when tech giants like Amazon and Microsoft are seemingly doubling down on their AI efforts.

Last month, OpenAI unveiled Stargate, a $500 billion project designed to facilitate the construction of data centers across the United States to support its AI advances.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella indicated that the company sets aside up to $80 billion annually for its AI advances while addressing the controversy about its partnership with OpenAI following the Stargate announcement.

On the other hand, Amazon recently allocated $100 billion to its capital expenditures, leading to the recent launch of Alexa+, a major upgrade for its existing generative AI assistant.

Benioff, as always, didn't hold back any punches. He blatantly singled out Microsoft for its AI efforts, branding it a "reseller of OpenAI." He doubts Microsoft's AI-powered productivity tools and their effectiveness and efficiency.

According to Benioff:

"Where on their side are they delivering agents? Where in their company have they done this? Where are they at best practice? Do they have humans and agents working together to create customer success? Are they re-balancing their workforce with humans and agents?"

This isn't the first time Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has placed Microsoft on the spot because of its AI efforts. Last year, the executive branded Copilot as the new Microsoft Clippy, suggesting it doesn't deliver value.

At the beginning of the year, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff indicated that the company is seriously debating hiring new software engineers due to the "incredible productivity gains" from agentic AIs.

As it happens, the company is set to lay off up to 1,000 employees from its workforce (via Bloomberg). Oddly, Salesforce is currently recruiting new employees in its market division to sell its AI-powered products and services.

Salesforce has remained quiet about the reported job cuts, making it difficult to determine which departments within the organization will be affected. However, sources with close affiliations with the company disclosed that affected employees should be able to apply for other positions within the company, potentially including the AI sales positions.

For context, Salesforce had up to 73,000 employees as of January 2024, meaning up to 1.36% of the company's workforce will be affected by the job cuts.

While speaking at an event hosted by Barclays Plc in December 2024, CEO Brian Millham highlighted the company's profit-driven focus:

“Just because we have a hit new product doesn’t mean that we ignore the commitments we’ve made internally and externally as we think about scaling this business. We’re looking across the entire company to say, ‘Where can we get more efficiencies? How can we continue to get fuel for the work that we’re doing to go invest in scale going forward?”

Salesforce isn't the only company that has been affected by job cuts. In January, Microsoft announced two rounds of layoffs. First, the company announced performance-based job cuts across departments, including security, slated to impact "less than 1%" of the workforce. Later, the Redmond giant was hit by another round of layoffs, impacting employees across security, experiences, sales, devices, and gaming departments.

More recently, the company announced a hiring freeze, impacting its consulting business in the U.S. as part of its broader plans to cut costs.

Meta's workforce is on the chopping board, too. The Facebook maker is expected to make performance-based cuts, slated to impact approximately 5%. According to CEO Mark Zuckerberg:

“We typically manage out people who aren’t meeting expectations over the course of a year, but now we’re going to do more extensive performance-based cuts during this cycle."

Elsewhere, Zuckerberg painted a picture of a potential future at Meta where mid-level AI engineers might claim coding jobs from software engineers.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has been hitting the headlines over the past few months because of his sentiments toward Microsoft's AI efforts. As you may already know, the AI bubble is the new craze in the tech industry that every major tech corporation is racing to adopt and integrate across its services. Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has been the talk of the town after unveiling its V3-powered AI model, R1, which, according to benchmarks, surpassed OpenAI o1's reasoning capabilities across math, science, and coding at a fraction of the development cost for proprietary models.

Microsoft Chief Communication Officer Frank X. Shaw recently addressed Benioff's myriad of comments aimed at Microsoft's AI and Copilot efforts on LinkedIn.

Last year, Benioff bashed Microsoft's AI efforts, indicating the Redmond giant had done "a tremendous disservice" to the industry while referring to Copilot. According to the Salesforce CEO:

"When you look at how Copilot has been sold to our customers, it's disappointing. It doesn't work. It spews data all over our floors, it doesn't deliver value. I haven't found a customer who has transformational work with Copilot. Copilot is just the new Microsoft Clippy."

Shaw's LinkedIn post also features an attachment, which he refers to as Benioff's playbook from many years ago. The executive indicated that Salesforce's CEO had borrowed a page from his book to compete with rivals in the AI space. "Position yourself either as the leader, or against the leader in the industry," a quote Shaw lifted from Benioff's playbook. According to Microsoft's CCO, Benioff's comments about Microsoft's AI efforts are "all about marketing, less about truth or substance."

Marc Benioff — The Salesforce "marketing guru"

As Benioff notes in rule #23 of his playbook under the tagline "Reporters Are Writers, Tell Them a Story":

"Although the battle between salesforce.com and Siebel wasn't driven by a personal feud, the press didn't see it that way, and reporters loved building drama around this story. That makes sense. After all, reporters like to tell a story with a protagonist and a villain."

Elsewhere, the Salesforce CEO claimed Microsoft repackaged OpenAI and dropped it into Excel, further indicating that customers barely use Copilot, and that's when they don't have a ChatGPT license. He's previously been spotted tooting his company's own trumpet, indicating Salesforce is probably the largest AI enterprise supplier in the world, with the capability of doing "a couple of trillion AI transactions per week."

Benioff was quick to indicate that Microsoft was in panic mode after it announced its plan to add support for creating autonomous agents to Copilot Studio, further indicating that Copilot is a flop because Microsoft lacks the data to create real corporate intelligence.

Microsoft CCO Frank Shaw isn't the first executive at the company to call out Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff over his comments on the tech giant's AI efforts. Earlier this month, Charles Lamanna, Microsoft CVP of Business & Industry, shared impressive stats indicating over "100,000 organizations" had used Copilot Studio to create AI agents by October 2024, potentially rebutting Benioff's comments.

Following OpenAI and SoftBank's surprise announcement of the $500 billion Stargate project designed to facilitate the construction of data centers across the United States, Microsoft lost its status as the ChatGPT maker's exclusive cloud provider. In an interview with CNBC, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff (well-known for criticizing Microsoft's AI efforts) indicated:

"I think it's extremely important that OpenAI gets to other platforms because Microsoft is building their own AI and I don't think Microsoft will use OpenAI in the future."

Over the past few months, Microsoft's multi-billion dollar partnership with OpenAI has seemingly been strained due to several factors. As you may know, most of Microsoft's AI-powered models are backed by OpenAI's technology. However, a report by Reuters suggested that the Redmond giant could be moving away from OpenAI's AI products, like its GPT-4 model, because it's too expensive and isn't fast enough to meet its enterprise customers' requirements.

The move is reportedly part of the tech giant's broader plans to reduce the cost of its enterprise services, including GitHub Copilot, and pass on the savings to consumers. On the other hand, OpenAI has complained about Microsoft's failure to meet cloud computing needs, delaying the launch of some of its next-gen AI models. Interestingly, the AI firm claimed that its rivals could first achieve the coveted AGI benchmark because of Microsoft's computing shortcomings.

Perhaps more interestingly, Benioff claimed, "Mustafa Suleyman and Sam Altman aren't best friends." He attributed his deductions to last year's Davos conference, where both executives were on the panel. He added that they both seemed uneasy around each other, potentially highlighting friction between Microsoft and OpenAI.

The best tech bromance strays as OpenAI races to build AGI

To this end, Microsoft's partnership status with OpenAI remains unclear. However, both parties signed a new agreement that gives Microsoft “the right of first refusal.” For context, Microsoft will be the first option to host OpenAI workloads in its cloud infrastructure and services. However, if it can't meet the requirements, OpenAI can source the services from competitors.

Additionally, the new agreement retains 4 key elements of the original agreement, including rights to OpenAI's IP for its AI products, OpenAI's API exclusivity to Azure, revenue sharing agreements that flow both ways, and Microsoft remains OpenAI's major investor.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son indicated that AGI is coming very soon with the launch of Stargate. Interestingly, the executive's remarks reiterate Sam Altman's remarks that AGi could be achieved sooner than anticipated with current hardware. But we might have to wait a bit longer after the executive dismissed reports alluding AGi would be deployed next month. "We are not gonna deploy AGI next month, nor have we built it," indicated Altman. "We have some very cool stuff for you but pls chill and cut your expectations 100x!"

However, it seems OpenAI might be close to achieving AGI. Sam Altman claimed that OpenAI knows how to build AGI and could shift its focus to superintelligence. Additionally, the ChatGPT maker is reportedly planning to scrap a stringent clause that would sever its ties with Microsoft after achieving AGI to secure additional funding and access to its cloud computing services.

A leaked document revealed OpenAI would only hit the AGI benchmark after developing an AI system capable of generating up to $100 billion in profit. This seems like a reach considering OpenAI's recent predicament, placing it at the cusp of bankruptcy with projections of $5 billion in losses within a year. Market analysts claim OpenAI could suffer an additional $44 billion loss before turning a profit in 2029, partly due to its Microsoft tie-up.

Microsoft had a tough week in the middle of January. The tech giant was attacked by Salesforce, controversially rebranded some of its most iconic apps, and raised the price of Microsoft 365 while forcing Copilot onto millions of paid subscribers. Even the good news surrounding Microsoft last week had a negative undertone, since a welcome addition to the Windows 11 taskbar only came after years of the same feature being available on smartphones.

To top things off, Android co-founder Rich Miner discussed how Bill Gates cost Microsoft $400 billion by losing the mobile space to Android (and iOS).

Well, they say any publicity is good publicity. It seems Microsoft decided to put that idiom to the test.

Microsoft 365 increases in price

Microsoft 365 went up in price for the first time in 12 years. While Microsoft did not blame the price increase on Copilot, the AI-powered tool is now included with Personal and Home subscriptions, though there are limits.

The price increase adds $3 per month to Microsoft 365. That means you'll have to pay $9.99 per month for Microsoft 365 Personal and $12.99 per month for Microsoft 365 Family.

Following the price hike, Microsoft will give those with a Microsoft 365 Personal or Home subscription a limited amount of Copilot credits. Getting unlimited access to Copilot still requires a separate paid plan, Copilot Pro, which costs an additional $20 per month.

If you don't want Copilot or prefer to stay on a more affordable plan, you can switch to a "classic" sub tier, but that option will only be available for a limited time.

Microsoft rebrands its Office apps

Microsoft 365 got a new name this month, sort of. The service has the same names as before but its app on iOS, Android, and Windows is now called "Microsoft 365 Copilot." That new name replaces the oddly worded "Microsoft 365 (Office)" name that indicated many still search for "Office" in app stores to find Microsoft 365 applications.

The change brings a new app icon and name rolled out on January 15, 2025. Microsoft also updated the URL for Microsoft 365. The change coincides with Microsoft giving AI credits to Microsoft 365 Personal and Home subscribers, as mentioned above.

The change drew criticisms from many, including our executive editor Jez Corden.

"Microsoft 365 itself was an absurdist idea, throwing away decades of cultural muscle memory for what feels like an ideological effort rather than one based on good sense," said Corden. "Calling it Microsoft 365 Copilot, before Copilot is even really a thing, again strikes me as completely odd."

I agree with Corden. Copilot isn't an established brand and many dislike the concept of integrating AI with everything. The move comes off as a desperate attempt to build brand recognition for Copilot by attaching it to Microsoft's most successful applications.

Salesforce CEO attacks Microsoft

Marc Benioff, the CEO of Salesforce, attacked Microsoft yet again. The executive has been outspoken regarding Microsoft's AI efforts and Benioff took another jab at Microsoft recently.

"Microsoft has disappointed everybody with how they've approached this AI world," said Benioff in a recent interview. "And today, when we look at Copilot and what they've done. They've repackaged OpenAI and dropped it into Excel."

Benioff called Copilot the new Clippy a few months ago, so the recent criticism of Microsoft's AI efforts is on brand for the Salesforce CEO. Of course, Salesforce is a major competitor to Microsoft in the AI space, so all criticisms in either direction need to be taken with a grain of salt.

An ongoing ad campaign from Salesforce that's airing during the NFL playoffs states that Agentforce is "what AI was meant to be." While those ads do not mention Microsoft or Copilot specifically, the message of the campaign echoes the thoughts of Benioff.

Windows 11 adds battery percentage to taskbar

Windows 11 will soon have a feature that I bet many people already assumed existed. The tech giant started testing the option to show a PC's battery percentage within the taskbar late last week. That feature is already available on macOS, iPadOS, iOS, and most Android devices, but it has been absent on Windows 11 up to this point.

The option to show battery percentage in the taskbar is a hidden feature in the latest Dev Channel Windows Insider build of Windows 11. Assuming the feature works as intended and lacks any major issues, it should roll out to Insiders officially in the near future. Hopefully, it doesn't take long for the option to ship to everyone.

How Microsoft made "the greatest mistake of all time"

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has gone on record saying that losing the mobile market to Android was his "greatest mistake ever." Rich Miner, an Android co-founder, has a different takeaway from the history of Microsoft, mobile devices, and Android.

"I literally helped create Android to prevent Microsoft from controlling the phone the way they did the PC - stifling innovation," said Miner. "So it's always funny for me to hear Gates whine about losing mobile to Android."

Miner went on to say, "so, sorry, Bill, you're more responsible for losing the $400B than you realize."

The statements from Gates and Miner all have merit, even if the tones vary drastically between them.

Reviews

Each week our experts review the latest games and gadgets. The most intriguing item we've looked at lately is the AVerMedia Elite Go GC313Pro, which is a combined capture card and charging brick.

"The AVerMedia Elite Go GC313 Pro is the ultimate charging brick and capture card crossover," said our Cole Martin. "Innovating on both accessories and merging them into one must-have device that can easily fit in your pocket or bag alongside your handheld console when on the go."

Our team also looked at an excellent laptop bag from Tomtoc, a gaming headset with long battery life from HyperX, and Lenovo's ThinkPad X12 Detachable PC.

Deals

We love laptops, apps, and games here at Windows Central. What we dislike is paying full price for things. Thankfully, there are some great deals going on right now to help you save money on essential apps, a popular game, and a Copilot+ PC.

As generative AI scales greater heights, job security is increasingly becoming a major concern among professions aside from potential existential doom. Last year, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati indicated that AI would create new job opportunities while simultaneously killing some professions:

"Some creative jobs maybe will go away. But maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place — you know, if the content that comes out of it is not very high quality."

Interestingly, with the rapid emergence of AI agents that can automate certain tasks and serve as virtual project managers, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff claims the company is seriously debating hiring engineers in 2025 (@tsarnick on X).

RELATED: NVIDIA CEO says coding might be dead in the water with the prevalence of AI

"We are going through a global labor shortage, we see all these declining birth rates. We understand that it's harder to hire, especially people right here in the United States in sales and service," Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, explained. "And this is going to give us the ability to do more. And as an example of that, look at engineering."

Benioff went on to state that Salesforce is looking at essentially freezing hiring for software engineers, owing to agentic AI. "I think in engineering this year at Salesforce, we're seriously debating maybe weren't gonna' hire anybody this year because we've seen such incredible productivity gains because of the agents that work side-by-side with our engineers, making them more productive. And we can all agree, software engineering has become a lot more productive in the last two years with these basically new models."

Interestingly, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently echoed similar sentiments, indicating;

"in fact, the way to conceptualize the world going forward is everyone of us doing knowledge work will use Copilot to do our work and we will create a swarm of agents to help us with our work and drive the productivity of our organizations."

As you may know, users can create new agents through Copilot Studio and integrate them into Copilot. Organizations can also build tailored AI solutions to meet their specific wants and needs.

"Microsoft has disappointed everybody with how they've approached this AI world," indicated Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff in a recent The Bartlett Show episode. "And today, when we look at Copilot and what they've done. They've repackaged OpenAI and dropped it into Excel."

The CEO added that based on feedback he received from clients who'd interacted with the product (via @tsarnick on X), customers aren't finding themselves transformed with Microsoft Copilot AI. Benioff further indicated that customers "barely" use Copilot, "and that's when they don't have a ChatGPT license or something like that in front of them."

This isn't the first time Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has criticized Microsoft's AI and Copilot efforts. In October 2024, the executive claimed Microsoft's AI efforts are a "tremendous disservice" to the industry while referring to Copilot as the new Microsoft Clippy, further suggesting it doesn't work or deliver value. Coincidentally, Microsoft announced its plan to add support for creating autonomous agents to Copilot Studio, potentially giving Salesforce's Agentforce a run for its money following Benioff's comments.

Benioff had touted Salesforce as the largest AI enterprise supplier in the world, with the capability of doing "a couple of trillion AI transactions per week." He added that the company's Agentforce offering is what AI was meant to be, while gloating over feedback from clients:

"This must be witchcraft, this is crazy with what's happening with my customers right now."

The executive indicated Microsoft's Copilot agents' announcement illustrates panic mode, further highlighting that Copilot is a flop because Microsoft lacks the data to create real corporate intelligence while touting Agentforce's excellence in the field.

Microsoft's struggles with Copilot and AI

Interestingly, Benioff might be on to something if recent Microsoft insider woes about the company's AI and Copilot struggles are anything to go by. According to a damning report, Microsoft depends on third-party vendors to make Copilot work across its Microsoft 365 apps. An employee at the company indicated:

"There's a gap between the ambitious vision and what users are actually experiencing. Internally, we're calling it growing pains. We are building the plane as we fly it."

Interestingly, a high-ranking Microsoft executive described most Copilot AI tools as "gimmicky" while describing their functionality. Another employee highlighted the security and privacy concerns riddling Copilot, indicating the tool "works really darn well at sharing information that the customer doesn't want to share or didn't think it had made available to its employee, such as salary info." Perhaps more concerning, the employees indicated that the issue wasn't an easy fix, it could take years.

RELATED: Microsoft staffers say Copilot's latest update is a step backward

To this end, Microsoft won't slow down its AI efforts. A separate report revealed that employees in the firm's AI division are handsomely compensated compared to their counterparts in Azure and Cloud. Interestingly, the company reportedly uses employees' AI contributions when evaluating performance and requesting retention bonuses for indispensable employees.

What you need to know

• Earlier this month, Microsoft unveiled a new benchmark called Windows Agent Arena, designed to provide a platform for testing AI agents in realistic Windows operating system environments.
• Early benchmarks show that multi-modal AI agents have an average performance success rate of 19.5% compared to the coveted average human performance rating of 74.5%.
• The benchmark is open-source and provides an avenue for deep research which could significantly enhance the development of AI agents. However, there are critical security and performance concerns abound.

With the emergence of generative AI and its broad adoption, the technology is rapidly transitioning from simple text and image-based prompts. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang predicted that the next phase of AI would be dominated by self-driving cars and humanoid robots, and we've seen major tech corporations like Tesla make significant leaps on that front.

Over the past few weeks, we've seen Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff throw lethal jabs at Microsoft over claims that it has done a major disservice to the AI industry. "Copilot is just the new Microsoft Clippy," added Benioff. "It doesn't work or deliver value."

The Salesforce CEO also used the opportunity to tout the company as "the largest AI supplier in the world" with the capability of doing "a couple of trillion AI transactions per week." In case you missed it, Microsoft recently announced Copilot Studio will soon support the creation of autonomous agents. Like Salesforce's Agentforce offering, Microsoft's Copilot agents will help automate tasks across IT, marketing, sales, customer service, and finance.

Benioff viewed Microsoft's announcement as a sign that the company is panicking. "Copilot is a flop because Microsoft lacks the data and enterprise security models to create real corporate intelligence," added Salesforce CEO. "Clippy 2.0, anyone?"

More interestingly, Microsoft unveiled a new benchmark called Windows Agent Arena earlier this month. For context, the benchmark is designed to promote the testing of AI agents in Windows operating system environments. As such, the benchmark could potentially expedite the development of AI assistants with advanced and sophisticated capabilities to handle complex tasks across various applications.

According to research:

“Large language models show remarkable potential to act as computer agents, enhancing human productivity and software accessibility in multi-modal tasks that require planning and reasoning. However, measuring agent performance in realistic environments remains a challenge.”

What is Windows Agent Arena, and how is it important in the AI revolution?

As highlighted above, Windows Agent Arena provides a platform for testing of AI agents in realistic Windows operating system environments, including apps like Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Paint, Clock, VLC media player, and more.

According to Microsoft:

"We adapt the OSWorld framework to create 150+ diverse Windows tasks across representative domains that require agent abilities in planning, screen understanding, and tool usage. Our benchmark is also scalable and can be seamlessly parallelized in Azure for a full benchmark evaluation in as little as 20 minutes."

Microsoft Research developed a multi-modal agent called Navi to explore the framework's capabilities. The AI model was asked to perform several tasks in the Windows Agent Arena benchmark, including turning a website into a PDF file and placing it on the main screen. Benchmarks shared indicate that the multi-modal agent had an average performance success rate of 19.5%, in contrast to the average human performance rating of 74.5%.

While the benchmark shows automating certain tasks using AI could be a stretch at this point, it provides a reliable platform for the improvement of AI agents.

Privacy and security continue to concern most users. For instance, Microsoft's controversial Windows Recall feature has sparked concern among most Windows users, prompting scrutiny by regulators. The tech giant abruptly recalls the controversial feature to fine-tune the experience by making it more secure. The feature should ship soon, but users can uninstall it.

Similarly, AI agents like Navi continue to spark concern among users as they become more sophisticated. As the tools become more advanced, they'll have more access to applications that often hold the user's personal credentials. It could potentially pose a significant threat, especially since hackers are embracing sophisticated ploys, including AI, which makes their attacks less obvious.

The Windows Agent Arena is open-source and presents more research opportunities, ultimately promoting expedited development of reliable and capable models. While responding to the security and performance concerns, the Microsoft researchers behind the platform told Windows Central:

“Our computer-controlling agent, named 'Navi,' is open-source, and our research project leverages models from OpenAI, such as GPT-4V, along with Microsoft’s Phi3. While both Windows Agent Arena and Navi are open-source, the specific models in use are separate and maintained by their respective providers.

The disparity between AI system performance and human-level intelligence remains a substantial, industry-wide challenge. We’re working to address this through continuous data curation, fine-tuning, and optimization, making steady progress toward narrowing this gap.

Our approach to responsible AI prioritizes ethical guidelines, with privacy and safety at the forefront. We ensure that AI agents avoid unauthorized access or information leaks, and users retain control to understand, direct, or override AI actions. As we advance in this field, our commitment remains firm: building AI that respects privacy, promotes fairness, and contributes positively to society.”

Elsewhere, Anthropic recently unveiled a new API dubbed “Computer Use” in open beta. Through the API, developers can "direct Claude to use computers the way people do—by looking at a screen, moving a cursor, clicking buttons, and typing text."

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What you need to know

• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently claimed Microsoft has done a tremendous disservice to the AI industry with Copilot, which he refers to as "just the new Microsoft Clippy."
• Microsoft announced its plan to add support for creating autonomous agents to Copilot Studio, potentially giving Salesforce's Agentforce a run for its money. 
• Benioff indicated Microsoft's Copilot agents' announcement illustrates panic mode, further highlighting that Copilot is a flop because Microsoft lacks the data to create real corporate intelligence while touting Agentforce's excellence in the field.

The generative AI landscape is rapidly gaining traction, with major tech corporations racing to capitalize on the hype. Microsoft is considered a major player in the space owing to its early investment and adoption of OpenAI's technology across its tech stack.

Last week, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff threw a lethal jab at Microsoft, claiming the tech giant has done a "tremendous disservice" to the industry while referring to Copilot as the new Microsoft Clippy. In the special podcast episode dubbed Salesforce Can Beat Microsoft in AI, Benioff discussed its AI efforts, including its Agentforce offering designed to help build customized AI agents. The CEO claimed Salesforce is probably the largest AI enterprise supplier in the world, with the capability of doing "a couple of trillion AI transactions per week."

Interestingly, Microsoft recently announced that Copilot Studio will soon support the creation of autonomous agents. Like Salesforce's Agentforce offering, Microsoft's Copilot agents will help automate tasks across IT, marketing, sales, customer service, and finance.

Following Microsoft's announcement of its Copilot agents offering, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff took to X (formerly Twitter) to throw jabs:

"Microsoft rebranding Copilot as ‘agents’? That’s panic mode. Let’s be real—Copilot’s a flop because Microsoft lacks the data, metadata, and enterprise security models to create real corporate intelligence. That is why Copilot is inaccurate, spills corporate data, and forces customers to build their own LLMs. Clippy 2.0, anyone? Meanwhile, Agentforce is transforming businesses now. Agentforce doesn’t just handle tasks—it autonomously drives sales, service, marketing, analytics, and commerce. With data, LLMs, workflows, and security all integrated into a single Customer 360 platform: This is what AI was meant to be."

Benioff's comments on the Copilot agents' announcement have been received with mixed feelings. As highlighted by Prasad Bhojak on X: 

"I am quite surprised on this direct attack on Microsoft by Salesforce , it means there’s a distribution battle happening for mindshare . As a partner with both of these platforms, we dawn an agnostic hat to focus on value instead of increasing licensing or consumption."

Microsoft may have a Copilot problem

As you may know, Microsoft recently overhauled the Copilot experience across Windows, iOS, Android, and the web with a "warm and inviting" user interface, an immersive chat experience, and more. The massive update ships with next-gen AI features, including Copilot Vision buried behind Microsoft's $20 Copilot Pro monthly subscription. 

Following the recent update, several users have taken to social media, highlighting Copilot's degraded user experience, low-quality responses, and more:

"Is it just me or do y'all hate the new copilot update? The original layout was so good and the original voice was really good, the new update is so confusing and the new voices are annoying. I used to use Copilot for everything, and im talking everything. Until they bring back the old version i will be going back to ChatGPT."

OpenAI's ChatGPT continues to reign over Copilot on mobile, making it difficult for Microsoft to establish some ground on that front. The ChatGPT maker also shipped its AI-powered chatbot to Windows, 5 months after snubbing Microsoft for Apple despite its multi-billion dollar investment. While addressing the concerns, former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati indicated that the company shipped ChatGPT to macOS first because it prioritized where its clients are, potentially indicating that most of its user base uses Apple gadgets. 

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What you need to know

• Microsoft's Copilot Studio will soon support creating autonomous agents if you're part of the company's public preview.
• Copilot agents are AI-powered tools that can help with a wide range of tasks and processes.
• Agents can respond to specific triggers autonomously or respond to prompts.
• Microsoft also introduced ten new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365 designed to help sales, service, finance, and supply chain teams.

Microsoft announced that the ability to create custom Copilot agents will enter public preview at Microsoft Ignite, which starts on November 19, 2024. Copilot agents are a step toward the future seen in films and television in which you can ask AI to take care of something for you. Agents can work either autonomously or respond to prompts to aid organizations and workers. Since it's possible to create custom Copilot agents, their capabilities will expand over time, but they can already help with tasks such as lead generation, processing orders, onboarding staff, assisting in sales, and automating a supply chain.

Copilot agents can get context from data in Microsoft 365 Graph, systems of record, and Dataverse and Fabric.

What is a Copilot agent?

Copilot agents are AI assistants that can be created to help with certain tasks. The agents can help departments such as IT, marketing, sales, customer service, and finance, according to Microsoft. The tech giant also sees value in the tools for travel, retail, and financial services.

Microsoft envisions a future in which organizations have a range of AI-powered agents acting autonomously or responding to prompts. Microsoft explains that you can think of Copilot agents " as the new apps for an AI-powered world."

Agents made with Copilot Studio run the "latest models," according to Microsoft. Most notably, OpenAI o1 powers some of the agents at the moment, though that is in limited private preview.

Copilot agents entered private preview recently and will enter public preview next month. Microsoft shared quotes from several companies that have used custom agents to showcase how the tool can help organizations.

“We’re using AI to do the time-consuming work so they can use their resource and expertise to make decisions quickly based on the data available,” said Pets at Home CIO William Hewish. “It’s truly helped us empower colleagues through both the level of information at their fingertips, and in time spent on more nuanced and insightful work. The agents solution allows the profit protection team to more effectively assess cases for potential profit loss and dedicate more of their time to skilled analysis, rather than simply information gathering.”

McKinsey & Company built a Copilot agent to help with reviewing client proposals and has seen early success. "We see tremendous potential for agents to help our clients rewire the way their businesses operate," said Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company Rodney Zemmel.

Salesforce CEO drama

Recently, Salesforce CEO Mark Benioff called out Copilot, dubbing the new AI tool the "new Microsoft Clippy." The executive claimed that Copilot does not deliver value to customers and predicted the tool will not be around for long.

"When you look at how Copilot has been sold to our customers, it's disappointing. It doesn't work," said Benioff. "It spews data all over our floors, it doesn't deliver value. I haven't found a customer who has transformational work with Copilot. Copilot is just the new Microsoft Clippy."

Benioff believes that "Salesforce can beat Microsoft in AI." At least part of the CEO's confidence is due to Agentforce, a new tool from Salesforce that helps build customized AI agents. Agentforce can handle "a couple of trillion AI transactions per week," and Benioff has been effusive in his praise of the tool.

"This must be witchcraft, this is crazy with what's happening with my customers right now," said the Salesforce CEO.

Both Salesforce and Microsoft are working on tools for building custom AI agents, but it's early days for Agentforce and Copilot agents. Now that Microsoft's offering is in public preview, we'll be able to get a better gauge of how it stacks up against Agentforce.

Autonomous agents in Dynamics 365

Microsoft also introduced ten new autonomous agents in Dynamics 365 to help sales, service, finance, and supply chain teams. Microsoft highlights that the agents available in Dynamics 365 follow the tech giant's security, privacy, and AI responsibility standards and shared a few examples of agents now available in Dynamics 365:

• Sales Qualification Agent: In a profession where time literally equals money, this agent enables sellers to focus their time on the highest priority sales opportunities while the agent Classified as Microsoft Confidential researches leads, helps prioritize opportunities and guides customer outreach with personalized emails and responses.
• Supplier Communications Agent: This agent enables customers to optimize their supply chain and minimize costly disruptions by autonomously tracking supplier performance, detecting delays and responding accordingly — freeing procurement teams from time consuming manual monitoring and firefighting.
• Customer Intent and Customer Knowledge Management Agents: A business gets one chance to make a first impression, and these two agents are game changers for customer care teams facing high call volumes, talent shortages and heightened customer expectations. These agents work hand in hand with a customer service representative by learning how to resolve customer issues and autonomously adding knowledge-based articles to scale best practices across the care team.

Microsoft will talk about custom AI agents at its Ignite conference, which runs from November 19-22. Tickets for attending Ignite in person are sold out, but you can also attend the event online. There, the tech giant will also showcase the tools in action and highlight how they help organizations.

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What you need to know

• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff recently bashed Microsoft for its Copilot AI service.
• He claimed Microsoft's AI efforts are a "tremendous disservice" to the industry while referring to Copilot as the new Microsoft Clippy, further suggesting it doesn't work or deliver value.
• Benioff predicts the hype around Copilot will fade, potentially sending the service to the Microsoft Graveyard as its user base dwindles.

Microsoft is undoubtedly among the major key players in the AI landscape. Market analysts and experts are betting on the tech giant to become the world's most valuable company in the next five years. They attributed their predictions to Microsoft's strategic multi-billion partnership with OpenAI and its early adoption and integration of AI across its tech stack.

However, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is of a different opinion on Microsoft's trajectory in the AI landscape. In an episode of the Rapid Response podcast dubbed "Salesforce can beat Microsoft in AI," the CEO discussed the company's efforts in the AI landscape, including a recap of the company's just-concluded Dreamforce conference and Agentforce.

For context, Agentforce is Salesforce's new tool designed to help build customized AI agents. Benioff claimed Salesforce is probably the largest AI enterprise supplier in the world, with the capability of doing "a couple of trillion AI transactions per week." The CEO further claims the company's Agentforce offering is what AI was meant to be while referring to client  feedback since shipping the entry: 

"This must be witchcraft, this is crazy with what's happening with my customers right now."

Later in the interview, the host asked Benioff how Agentforce differs from Microsoft's Copilot AI offering. "Microsoft has done a tremendous disservice not only to our whole industry but also all the AI research that has been done."

According to Benioff:

"When you look at how Copilot has been sold to our customers, it's disappointing. It doesn't work. It spews data all over our floors, it doesn't deliver value. I haven't found a customer who has transformational work with Copilot. Copilot is just the new Microsoft Clippy."

The CEO claims unlike Microsoft's confusing narrative, Saleforce's Agentforce will make it possible for customers to see what is real and how easy it is to get value from AI with low hallucinogenic. "I don't think Copilot will be around," added Benioff. "I don't think customers will use it."

He predicts the transformation of enterprise with agents at the forefront. He further added that Agentforce will be the number one supplier of agents. "I think will have more than a billion agents running from Salesforce within the next 12 months."

Microsoft unveiled Copilot agents last month to help automate business processes and promote efficiency.

Who will win the AI arm's race?

Based on recent events, it's becoming clear that AI is an expensive venture. For instance, OpenAI spends up to $700,000 per day to keep ChatGPT running. This is on top of the ridiculous amount of electricity required to power the operations coupled with cooling water. 

The ChatGPT maker was reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy, with a $5 billion loss within the next 12 months lingering over its head. OpenAI found itself in a tough financial situation due to its exorbitant spending on AI model training and staffing. However, investors, including Microsoft and NVIDIA, raised $6.6 billion, saving the AI firm from collapsing and pushing its market capitalization to $157 billion.

Interestingly, another report claims OpenAI might endure a massive $44 billion loss before seeing profit in 2029, partly due to the Microsoft tie-up. This happens amid investors raising concerns about spending on AI projects with little profit to show. Investors will likely pull back from the AI hype, prompting them to channel their investments elsewhere. 

At this point, startups like OpenAI might face difficulty generating enough revenue to fund their next-gen advances. Market analysts predict Microsoft will buy OpenAI within the next 3 years. Besides, $7 trillion and many years to build 36 semiconductor plants and additional data centers isn't a small ask.

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What you need to know

• A Salesforce app is now available for Microsoft Teams.
• The app allows people to bring account data and records from Salesforce into Teams.
• It is a collaborative app, which is a new class of applications that developers can build for Teams.

Salesforce just released an app for Microsoft Teams, which aims to improve collaboration. The app lets people bring account data and records from the Salesforce Sales Cloud or Service Cloud into the Microsoft Teams workspace.

Microsoft explains that the new Salesforce app for Teams is an example of a collaborative app. These types of apps were announced at Build 2021 and help people work synchronously and asynchronously.

With the Salesforce app for Teams, people shouldn't have to jump around between windows as much. Data from Salesforce will be directly accessible within Teams.

"Now, sales and service teams using Salesforce Sales Cloud or Service Cloud can bring account data and records into their Teams workspace for better collaboration," says Microsoft. "Sales and service reps no longer need to switch between windows to find key data; it's all in one workspace so teams can stay aligned and work efficiently."

People can access Salesforce records in Teams channels, chats, and meetings.

Microsoft highlights five features that Salesforce users can use with the Teams integration:

• Pin records to Teams channel tabs and chats to make them easy to find
• Edit records directly within Teams.
• Post important conversation moments on the Salesforce Chatter feed of records pinned on Teams channel and chat tabs.
• Mention Salesforce records (opportunities, accounts, cases, contacts, and leads) in Teams channels and chats to facilitate collaboration.
• Preview more details about records mentioned in Teams channels and chats.

The Salesforce app for Teams launched in preview back in October 2020 but is now generally available.

This new app helps Teams keep pace with Slack in another key area. Salesforce has similar functionality within Slack, which it now owns.

What you need to know

• Salesforce reportedly held talks to purchase communication platform Slack.
• The deal could potentially be worth tens of billions of dollars.
• Slack being purchased by Salesforce could help it compete more with Microsoft.

Cloud computing giant Salesforce is reportedly interested in purchasing Slack (via CNBC). A Dow Jones report states that Salesforce has been in talks with Slack and that a potential deal would "likely value Slack at more than its current market capitalization of $17 billion." The talks appear to be in early stages and are subject to change or fall through entirely.

Slack shares skyrocketed following reports of interest from Salesforce. Based on Slack's share value, the company is valued at roughly $20.8 billion. As noted by TechCrunch, Slack's share value has a tendency to fluctuate.

Salesforce has made some big purchases in recent years, including a $6.5 billion acquisition of MuleSoft in 2018 and a $15.3 billion purchase of Tableau in 2019. A potential purchase of Slack would likely be more than either of those past acquisitions by a sizeable margin.

The possibility of a move involving Slack and Salesforce could affect Microsoft significantly. Microsoft's cloud computing efforts compete with Salesforce. Microsoft Teams also goes head-to-head against Slack, even if the Slack CEO doesn't think so. There's so much overlap, in fact, that Microsoft was reportedly interested in purchasing both Salesforce and Slack at different times.

It's unclear at this what a potential acquisition would look like, but the combination of the Salesforce and Slack customer base would be sizeable. Salesforce and Slack both have strong footholds with enterprises. If Slack was acquired by Salesforce, it could put more weight behind the communication platform.

Neither Salesforce nor Slack have shared statements on the reports of a potential acquisition.

In a chat with Microsoft President Brad Smith, he stated that the company has no intentions on blocking data from LinkedIn to rival Salesforce after Microsoft acquires the business-themed social networking service.

Salesforce, which engaged in a bidding war with Microsoft over LinkedIn that it lost earlier this year, is now asking the European Commission to look into the deal. It claims that Microsoft could block access to LinkedIn's database of users from competitors like itself. However, speaking with Independent.ie (via MSPU), Smith denied that would happen:

Microsoft has proposed acquiring LinkedIn for $26.2 billion. The deal has already been approved by regulators in the U.S and other regions, but has yet to be cleared by the European Commission. On that topic, Smith stated today:

Microsoft hopes to close the LinkedIn deal by the end of 2016.

A new report claims that Salesforce, who lost to Microsoft in a bidding war to acquire LinkedIn, may be trying to stop the deal before it officially closes later this year.

Microsoft agreed to acquire the business-themed social network LinkedIn for $26.2 billion in June. Later, it was revealed that Salesforce was also bidding on LinkedIn, but the company decided to go with Microsoft's offer. Now The New York Times is reporting, via unnamed sources, that Salesforce is trying to convince the European Commission that there are serious concerns about the Microsoft-LinkedIn deal:

In addition, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has attacked the deal on his own, via his Twitter account today:

So far, there's no word on if the European Commission will open a formal investigation of the deal. The report says that Microsoft has not submitted their proposal to buy LinkedIn to the Commission, but it is expected to do so sometime in November.

Do you think Benioff has a point, or is this just sour grapes coming from a company that lost a bidding war? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!

Update: We have since received a statement from Microsoft on this topic, attributed to its President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith

It looks like Salesforce really, really wanted to buy LinkedIn. A new regulatory filing from the business-themed social network stated that its Transactions Committee discussed an email on July 7 from Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff. His email that the company would have paid even more for LinkedIn than the $26.2 billion all-cash offer that was accepted from Microsoft in June.

Microsoft and Salesforce engaged in a bidding war over LinkedIn earlier this year that caused Microsoft's first offer to go up by 22% for the price tag. In the filing made by LinkedIn to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, (via Recode), the company stated:

In the end, the committee determined that Microsoft's all-cash offer was a safer deal to make than the one from Salesforce. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of 2016, and LinkedIn's shareholders will vote to approve the deal on Aug. 19. If for some reason, the deal does not close, LinkedIn will be required to pay a termination fee of $725 million to Microsoft.

Google and Facebook were also actively bidding for LinkedIn according to Recode.

While consumers do not see the value in LinkedIn it sure seems all the big players in Silicon Valley wanted it badly. Perhaps Microsoft's $26B play is not so crazy after all.

A new report claims Microsoft's final price to acquire LinkedIn was 22% more than planned, due to several competing bids from Salesforce.

In a filing made by LinkedIn late on Friday to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, the business-themed social networking service stated that Microsoft originally offered LinkedIn a deal on May 4 that was worth $160 a share in cash. However, another company, referred to by LinkedIn as "Party A" in the SEC filing, had actually proposed a bid a few days earlier for between $160 and $165 a share in a cash-share deal.

The Wall Street Journal reports that "Party A" was in fact Salesforce:

Microsoft ended up on the winning side of the bidding battle, but it had to pay $196 a share to do so, or about $5 billion more than its original price. Microsoft agreed to pay $26.2 billion in cash for LinkedIn in mid-June, and the deal is expected to close by the end of 2016.

According to the site Recode there were two other parties also trying to buy LinkedIn with Party B being Google, and Party D being Facebook.

Just as promised, customer relationship management service (CRM) Salesforce has released its Salesforce1 Mobile app for Windows 10 Mobile. With the Salesforce1 Mobile app, business users can keep track of real-time data for their businesses right from their mobile device.

Even better, Salesforce1 can transform for the big screen with what Salesforce calls the Salesforce Lightning for Continuum. Through Continuum, users cans hook their phones up to a monitor to get a more robust look at their data from the app residing on their phone.

If your company uses Salesforce, you can now grab the Salesforce1 Mobile app by heading to Salesforce's website on your phone and logging in.

Source: Microsoft

The customer relationship management service Salesforce will be making a number of new partnership deals with Microsoft, including a new Salesforce1 Mobile app for Windows 10 that will be released sometime in the second half of 2016.

You may remember that Salesforce announced plans for a Salesforce1 Mobile app for both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone some time ago. That app went into invite-only testing in 2014. However, a more recent post on Salesforce's support forum confirms that the company has decided to move ahead with supporting Windows 10:

Salesforce has also announced plans to integrate Microsoft's OneNote and Skype for Business to the company's Salesforce Lightning Experience, along with adding Salesforce content in Office Delve. All of these features are expected to become available sometime in the second half of 2016.

Source: Salesforce

Microsoft and Salesforce announced a partnership in 2014, and now a new video from Microsoft shows how a business could access Salesforce's customer relationship management (CRM) service to increase sales on the road via a Surface tablet with Windows 10 installed.

The nearly three-minute video shows a salesperson for a fictional coffee company on the road, trying to make a sale to an airline. He uses his Surface tablet to link to his Salesforce system to learn about how the airline has recently decided to increase its fleet, The salesperson launches a quick virtual meeting with his teammates back home, again via his Surface, to find out if the coffee company can handle this increase by the airline before his meeting. His teammates, using the big Surface Hub PC, assures him that they can deal with this change.

The video is, of course, of a simulated sales trip, but it does show how a Salesforce user could access the service while on the road with Surface and Windows 10. The salesperson even manages to use Surface, combined with Cortana, to reschedule his flight home so he can make his daughter's science fair. Awww...that's sweet.

Source: Surface (YouTube)

Salesforce.com has provided more details about their recent partnership with Microsoft that was first announced in May, including word that the promised Salesforce1 app for Windows Phone and Windows 8.1 is now being tested via an invite-only preview.

While the app won't be available to the general public until sometime in the second half of 2015, Salesforce1 can now be accessed via Internet Explorer on Windows 8.1. The company also offered an update on progress to integrate their customer relationship management (CRM) products with other Microsoft software and services. It stated:

The partnership between Salesforce.com and Microsoft is in stark contrast to just a few years ago, when Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff was highly critical of Microsoft, Windows 8, and the company's overall direction. On Monday, Benioff shared the stage at the company's Dreamforce conference with Microsoft's Windows marketing head Tony Prophet. Business Insider quoted Benioff as saying, "A year ago at Dreamforce we would not have thought Microsoft would have been here, on stage. It's a shock."

Source: Salesforce