Microsoft has publicly apologized for its major outage that has taken out a number of core online services, including Microsoft 365, Teams, Outlook, and more. In a post on X, the company has now explained what caused the outage, and says service should have now been restored.
"We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services."
Microsoft insists that the issue was not caused by AI, but rather a network upgrade that went wrong. "This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions."
We are deeply sorry for the disruption this incident has caused our customers and partners. We know the trust they place in our services and take that responsibility extremely seriously. We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services. This was a technical issue not related to cyber or AI / agents. The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions. Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration. We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete.November 13, 2026
The company has also explained why restoration of the service has taken so long. It has been almost 24 hours since the network first went down, and Microsoft says it was because the company has "restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration."
With the network down for almost a day, many businesses across the globe have been without critical infrastructure needed to conduct their business. Establishments like the National Health Service in the United Kingdom have been unable to access email and Teams all day, delaying health services for some.
Microsoft says it will conduct a review of the incident and publish a report in the coming days and weeks. "We will provide a full post-incident report once our review is complete."
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