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Oracle and Microsoft are reportedly in talks to take over TikTok

2025-01-25T18:09:28-05:00

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

Oracle and a group of investors that includes Microsoft are in talks to take over TikTok’s global operations, reports NPR. The deal would reportedly see ByteDance keeping a minority stake in TikTok while “the app’s algorithm, data collection and software updates will be overseen by Oracle.” The outlet reports the White House is negotiating the deal, though President Trump has since denied he is working with Oracle.

“I have spoken to many people about TikTok and there is great interest in TikTok,” Trump said on a flight to Florida Saturday, Reuters reported. But according to the outlet, he said Oracle was not among those he’s spoken with:

“No, not with Oracle. Numerous people are talking to me, very substantial people, about buying it and I will make that decision probably over the next 30 days. Congress has given 90 days. If we can save TikTok, I think it would be a good thing.”

Others who have reportedly considered buying TikTok include Elon Musk, real estate billionaire Frank McCourt, and Shark Tank host Kevin O’Leary. Trump recently said he would like Larry Ellison, who co-founded Oracle, to buy the platform.

Oracle’s server network already provides the bulk of TikTok’s backbone, and a potential deal with it could see Oracle “effectively monitor and provide oversight with what is going on with TikTok,” according to one of NPR’s anonymous sources, who added that the agreement’s goal is to “minimize Chinese ownership.”

Microsoft’s reported involvement isn’t clear beyond that it is “engaged in the talks.” The company was also in the mix with Oracle and Walmart in a 2020 bid to take over TikTok that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates had called “a poison[ed] chalice.” Walmart reportedly isn’t involved this time around “after balking at the estimated price” of the app.

News of the talks comes after President Trump issued an executive order giving TikTok and others a 75-day reprieve from any enforcement action related to the United States’ requirement that ByteDance divest from TikTok. Trump had previously floated the possibility of a “joint venture” in which the US owns 50 percent of the company.

Microsoft declined to comment on this story. We’ve also reached out to Oracle, TikTok, and the White House.

Update January 26th: Added that Microsoft declined to comment. Also added Reuters’ report that President Trump denied working with Oracle on a deal, along with additional context about other potential TikTok buyers.

The AI spending frenzy is just getting started

2025-01-24T19:15:57-05:00

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images

“All I know is I’m good for my $80 billion.”

Rarely does a one-liner so perfectly capture the state of the moment. Here, you have Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella saying he’s “not in the details” about Stargate, the supposedly multi-hundred-billion AI infrastructure project driven by his marquee investment, OpenAI.

Nadella not being read in on the nebulous details of Stargate says a lot about how much Microsoft and OpenAI have drifted apart. Microsoft is mentioned in the Stargate press release since OpenAI’s models are still exclusive to Azure. But the most striking aspect of Stargate is not that the money isn’t there for it yet; it’s that OpenAI’s biggest backer has decided to not participate in what Sam Altman is calling “the most important project of this era.” As Nadella made clear on CNBC this week, he’s running his own, $80 billion AI infrastructure buildout and, going forward, OpenAI can get additional compute — with his blessing — elsewhere.

While it received fewer headlines this week, I found Nadella’s response to Elon Musk on X even more illuminating. In his response to Musk saying, “on the other hand, Satya definitely does have the money,” Nadella responded: “ And all...

Read the full story at The Verge.

Windows 11 is getting colorful new battery icons that are easier to understand at a glance

2025-01-24T15:46:15-05:00

The battery icon in Windows 11 is getting a colorful update. | Image: Microsoft

Microsoft is releasing a new Windows 11 Insider Preview Build today with some welcome improvements to the operating system’s battery icon – possibly sparing you the realization that you’ve chosen a dead outlet, or improperly plugged in your power adapter, or let your battery drain too much, before it’s far too late.

Windows’ battery icon, which has traditionally been black, is being updated with three colors “designed to communicate battery status of your PC with just a quick glance,” the company writes today on its Windows Blog. A green icon will indicate your computer is charging and “in a good state,” but will turn yellow when your battery has dropped below 20 percent charge and has entered energy saving mode. A red icon indicates you have a “critically low battery” and will need to plug in your computer as soon as possible before it dies.

The new colored battery icons will appear on the taskbar’s system tray, in the quick settings flyout, and in the general Windows Settings. Microsoft says they’ll also eventually be used on the Lock screen, but that functionality is coming in a future build.

Today’s preview release includes two additional improvements to the battery icon. Microsoft has simplified overlays, such as the lightning bolt charging icon, so that they won’t block the icon’s progress bar, and added the ability to show the battery’s charge percentage next to the icon in the system tray. It can be enabled by going to Settings > Power & battery and turning on the new “Battery Percentage” setting.

Microsoft says this is a “highly requested feature by Insiders and customers” and it should be a welcome upgrade over the battery icon Windows currently uses that provides minimal information and a vague representation of a battery’s remaining charge.The colors should make it immediately obvious that a laptop has started charging when plugged in, and it’s a lot harder to ignore (or forget about) a near-dead battery when it’s bright red with a single digit charge percentage right next to it.

The battery icon updates should already be available to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel who have opted to get the latest updates as soon as they’re available. It’ll take longer to reach general release and might even get tweaks before it reaches other early adopters:Microsoft says the “experience isn’t available to all Insiders just yet as we plan to monitor feedback before pushing it out to everyone.”

2025 looks like a great year for Xbox

2025-01-24T12:00:00-05:00

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

There’s a long-running joke in the Xbox community that Microsoft will finally hit its stride with Game Pass and Xbox releases “next year.” The joke has been going around since 2018, when Microsoft made a series of big studio acquisitions to create more Xbox games and make Game Pass more appealing. Year after year, Xbox fans have been waiting for a solid 12 months of new games to play, and it now looks like 2025 is going to be that “next year” everyone has been waiting for.

The annual Xbox Developer Direct this week was nothing short of excellent, after a turbulent year for the platform in 2024. Microsoft kicked the event off with a promise that all games shown would be on Game Pass, and impressively, they’d all be Xbox Play Anywhere titles so you can buy once and play on Xbox consoles and PC. It then dropped two big surprises: Ninja Gaiden 4 and a shadow drop of the remastered Ninja Gaiden 2 Black.

Published by Xbox Game Studios, Ninja Gaiden 4 is the latest entry in a long-running franchise that’s seen a lot of success on Xbox in the past. So it’s no surprise that Team Ninja also picked Microsoft to debut the remaster of Ninja Gaiden II.

South of Midnight finally got a release...

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Microsoft is closing its British flagship store in London

2025-01-24T08:04:05-05:00

Photo by Tom Warren / The Verge

Microsoft says it’s shutting down its UK “experience center” in London next month, nearly six years after it first opened as a 21,000-square-foot Microsoft store. “To better align with its focus on digital growth, Microsoft has decided to exit the lease at the Microsoft Experience Centre in London early,” says an unnamed Microsoft spokesperson in a statement to Windows Central.

The store originally opened in July 2019, just months before the pandemic lockdowns began. Microsoft then quickly transitioned it to an “experience center” alongside closing its stores in the US in 2020.

I visited the London flagship store for its opening day, at a time when the company had more than 80 retail stores worldwide. The big, bold, and British store included Surface devices on every floor, HoloLens headsets, a big Xbox gaming lounge, and even a real-life McLaren Senna sports car that you could sit in and play Forza.

It was quite the venue, set in the heart of Oxford Circus and inside a historic building with windows and ceilings from the 1920s. Microsoft spent two years renovating the space, with giant 4K video walls and an opening party that included British celebrities like Peter Crouch.

After transitioning the UK Microsoft store to an experience center, the software giant regularly used the space for business meetings and partner events — turning it into a showcase for Microsoft products and services in recent years. A similar experience center still exists in New York City, but I suspect it’s only a matter of time until that meets a similar fate to the one across the pond.

Everything we saw at Xbox’s Developer Direct 2025

2025-01-23T14:37:33-05:00

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Though Nintendo can technically claim it had the first big gaming news event of the year, at least Xbox’s Developer Direct actually showed off some games and let us know when we can play them. The showcase was anchored by deep dives into the biggest games coming down the green pipe like Doom: The Dark Ages and Compulsion Games’ South of Midnight, with a couple of surprises to fill out the nearly one-hour-long runtime. Here are the highlights from the show.

Ninja Gaiden 4

Xbox kicked off the Direct with the surprise reveal of Ninja Gaiden 4. The game is being codeveloped by Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja and Bayonetta studio PlatinumGames. Ninja Gaiden 4 revives the series’ bloody, fast-paced combat and high-stakes (but often frustrating) platforming with a new face, the ninja Yakumo. Yakumo will use his unique fighting styles to defeat the Divine Dragon Order that’s turned Tokyo into a dystopian, crumbling mess. Gaiden’s former protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, will also make an appearance as a playable character and Yakumo’s rival.

Ninja Gaiden 4 will launch in the fall of this year, but if you don’t want to wait for your bloody ninja action, you don’t have to. Xbox stealth dropped Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, a remake of Ninja Gaiden II, and it’s available right now on Xbox and Game Pass.

South of Midnight

The developers at Compulsion Games went into detail about South of Midnight’s gameplay and story. You play as Hazel who must use her powers as a Weaver, fighting monsters and traversing the haunted landscape, to rescue her mother who gets swept away in a hurricane. With this, everything I’ve seen about South of Midnight makes it seem like it’ll be one of my games of the year. It’s got a Black protagonist, features characters and tropes that harken to Southern gothic folklore, and its stop-motion art style makes it immediately stand out. I cannot wait to get my hands on this game when it releases on April 8th.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Sandfall Interactive was founded in Montpellier, France, in 2020 with a team led by former Ubisoft developers. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 is the studio’s first game — a turn-based RPG with a compelling narrative hook. The world has been ravaged by a being known as the Paintress. Every year, she writes down a number, and everyone older than that number disappears. Expeditions are sent out to stop the Paintress, and the game will follow Expedition 33 in their attempt to save humanity. In addition to an interesting Persona 5-style take on turn-based combat, Expedition 33 features some serious voice acting talent, starring Charlie Cox, Jennifer English, Ben Starr, and Andy Serkis. Can’t wait to hear them perform when Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 launches on April 24th.

Doom: The Dark Ages

To close out the Direct, Xbox gave us another look at Doom: The Dark Ages, the prequel to id Software’s 2016 Doom reboot and Doom Eternal. It will, of course, feature all the ripping and tearing a Doom enjoyer could want, along with an interesting focus on narrative — something the series isn’t really known for. But I suspect folks are far more interested in piloting a 30-story Doomguy-shaped mech suit when the game releases on May 15th.

Ninja Gaiden 4 is coming to Xbox, PC, and PS5

2025-01-23T13:11:03-05:00

Image: Microsoft

Microsoft promised a new game announcement at its Xbox Developer Direct event, and that game turned out to be Ninja Gaiden 4. The new entry in the long-running franchise is being co-developed by Team Ninja along with Platinum Games, the team behind action games like Bayonetta and Nier: Automata. The game is launching in Fall 2025, and will be coming to Xbox, PC, and PS5 (it will also be available via Game Pass).

While the Ninja Gaiden franchise has been around since the late ‘80s, it entered into a new era on the Xbox with the bloody, and tough-as-nails Ninja Gaiden on Xbox in 2004. That version, developed by Team Ninja, was ported to a handful of other consoles and also received a number of sequels. Based on the debut trailer, the new game looks to continue the dark action started with the 2004 release, but with even faster gameplay.

In addition to the brand-new release, a remake of Ninja Gaiden II was also announced called Ninja Gaiden II Black. In a nice surprise: the game is available now on console, PC, and Game Pass.

These aren’t the only returns to Ninja Gaiden in the works, however. Retro experts Dotemu are also developing a new throwback release called Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound.

Microsoft rumored to launch a smaller Surface Pro and Surface Laptop soon

2025-01-23T13:08:10-05:00

The Surface Laptop Go 3 could get a replacement very soon. | Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

It’s been less than a year since Microsoft launched its first Qualcomm Snapdragon X-powered Surface devices, and now a new rumor says followups could debut as soon as this spring. A report from Windows Central updates rumors that have circled since 2023, citing sources who say that new versions of the Surface Laptop and Surface Pro 2-in-1 are in the works, with 11- to 12-inch size screens, Windows on Arm, and lighter but still “premium” designs.

Microsoft has already scheduled a “major” Surface for Business event next week. There, we’re anticipating variants of the current Surface Laptop 7 and Surface Pro 11 CoPilot Plus PCs that have Intel’s Lunar Lake chips inside and are aimed at business customers.

According to Windows Central, it’s unclear where these smaller devices might launch, but they will have cheaper chipsets, like the Snapdragon X Plus or possibly the Snapdragon X that launched earlier this month at CES, to keep prices in the $800 - $900 range. When Microsoft last updated its Surface Laptop Go lineup with a third-generation in 2023, we thought it no longer made sense at the asking price, but the battery life and performance supported by Qualcomm’s hardware might change things for a new replacement.

The smaller Surface Pro is described as a competitor for Apple’s 11-inch iPad Pro. However, Windows Central reports it’s unclear if it is positioned to replace the old Surface Go series, which was last updated with the business-focused Surface Go 4.

Xbox beta tests support for massive amounts of external storage

2025-01-22T14:48:12-05:00

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Xbox has a new beta software update rolling out today for Insiders in the Alpha Skip-Ahead ring that enables Series X and S systems to support much larger external hard disks. Previously, the Xbox could only support up to 16TB of space on a single USB-connected drive.

With the new update, Xbox systems can now partition hard disks larger than 16TB into segments to use the full physical storage space. A single 24TB hard disk can now be formatted into multiple partitions (the largest still being 16TB) so you can archive more games, apps, and media than ever — if that’s something you’ve wanted to do.

However, if you have already been using a hard disk greater than 16TB with Xbox, the company says you’ll need to erase it first to take full advantage:

Drives greater than 16TB that have already been formatted will be unaffected by this change and would need to be reformatted to take advantage of the updated support for larger drives.

Although you still can’t play current generation games directly off an external drive, it can be useful to back up all of your installs anyway, or games made for older systems. You won’t need to redownload entire titles such as the 300GB-plus Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 using an internet connection when you feel like playing it again after a hiatus, unless they need an equally-sizable update.

Xbox is also releasing an update that enables new network quality indicators for cloud gaming sessions to tell you if your connection is slow and affecting your gameplay. They will appear in red bubbles on the upper right side of the screen, telling you what is happening, such as packet loss or increased ping, which can help you troubleshoot your connection.

Today, we have started to roll out network quality indicators for cloud gaming sessions on browser and TV, helping players to better diagnose potential network issues.

Learn more about this feature and get troubleshooting tips here: https://t.co/pcFXEeo1qi pic.twitter.com/hlSHLh1vyn
— Xbox Support (@XboxSupport) January 22, 2025

Microsoft is letting OpenAI get its own AI compute now

2025-01-21T18:29:47-05:00

Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge

Microsoft and OpenAI announced Tuesday that they have adjusted their partnership so that OpenAI can access competitors' compute.

The new agreement “includes changes to the exclusivity on new capacity, moving to a model where Microsoft has a right of first refusal (ROFR),” Microsoft says. “To further support OpenAI, Microsoft has approved OpenAI’s ability to build additional capacity, primarily for research and training of models.”

The foundation of their relationship (which runs through 2030) stays pretty much the same — Microsoft keeps its exclusive rights to OpenAI’s tech for products like Copilot, and OpenAI’s API remains exclusive to Azure. They’ll maintain their two-way revenue-sharing setup (it's been reported that Microsoft gets 20 percent of OpenAI’s revenue). Prior to today’s change, OpenAI was locked into using Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure exclusively for its computing needs.

The news follows the announcement of a joint venture between Arm, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, and OpenAI to build a system of data centers in the U.S. called Stargate.

The models OpenAI hopes to build and the user base it's looking to serve require billions of dollars in compute. It has been previously reported that some OpenAI shareholders felt Microsoft wasn’t moving fast enough to supply OpenAI with computing power, hence why the startup partnered with Oracle back in June (with the blessing of Microsoft) for the necessary compute.

There’s been a lot of buzz about Microsoft and OpenAI facing relationship woes after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman was briefly ousted from the company, causing a lot of very public drama. The New York Times reported that the relationship has grown increasingly strained due to financial pressures at OpenAI, concerns about stability, and growing friction between employees at both companies.

Last March, Microsoft hired Inflection CEO Mustafa Suleyman to lead its consumer AI efforts, along with most of Inflection’s staff, in a $650 million deal. According to The New York Times report, this move particularly angered some OpenAI leadership, including Altman.

OpenAI’s deal with Microsoft also has an unusual escape clause: if OpenAI creates artificial general intelligence (AGI), it could close off Microsoft’s access to some of its most powerful models developed after that point. AGI, reportedly, is defined as a system capable of generating more than $100 billion in profits. This was originally meant to keep such powerful AI from being commercialized, but now OpenAI is reportedly considering dropping this provision, likely to secure more Microsoft funding.