Under an uncharacteristically sunny Pacific Northwest sky last week, hundreds of Microsoft employees filed into a hangar-like structure on the company’s sprawling Redmond, Washington, campus to celebrate a half-century of software dominance.

Emceed by actor Brenda Song, the 50th anniversary event gathered Microsoft’s three CEOs—Bill Gates (1975–2000), Steve Ballmer (2000–2014), and current chief Satya Nadella—in a rare joint appearance to reminisce about the last five decades.

The company also devoted a large portion of the event to hyping up its consumer-focused Copilot product, in an effort to place generative AI as the next big chapter in its evolution.

“Now, the frontier is intelligence, so it’s incredible to see in the demos that we got today how we’re on the verge of something even more profound than what came for those first 50 years,” Gates said on stage.

The event spanned testimonials from Copilot power users, game show segments featuring Microsoft trivia, and talk show-style interviews with the CEOs—as well as two interruptions from activist employees who protested Microsoft’s sales of cloud and AI products to the Israeli military.

From humble beginnings in an Albuquerque garage to its current reinvention as a cloud and AI leader, the software giant has seen plenty of highs—Windows dominance, a successful push into gaming, its OpenAI partnership—as well as lows, including a landmark antitrust case and misjudged forays into mobile.

Look forward: At the event, we caught up with Yusuf Mehdi, EVP and consumer chief marketing officer, about the strategy behind the company’s next era, and learning from the past.

Keep reading here.—PK

Alexa, do you have time for an elevator pitch?

The Alexa Fund, which began in 2015 as a way to seed new startups in Amazon’s then-burgeoning voice ecosystem, is widening its net beyond its namesake platform. The tech giant’s venture arm recently announced several new hardware- and AI-centric investment areas, along with four startups it’s backing as part of that expanded scope.

The announcement follows Amazon’s long-awaited overhaul of its Alexa platform with a slew of new generative AI features. It also comes after Amazon pushed into the foundation model game for the first time with the new family of Nova models it announced last December.

Alexa Fund Director Paul Bernard said Alexa’s expanded capabilities offer more avenues for startups to engage in the platform, although that’s not the fund’s sole focus anymore.

“Our mission is not really about advancing Alexa’s cause, per se, like we start with making bets on these themes that have applicability for many parts of Amazon,” Bernard told Tech Brew. “At the same time, Alexa is getting more capabilities. Alexa has ears, Alexa has eyes, Alexa has screens. And so the applicability of these technologies to Alexa is relevant, and is only going to get more relevant.”

Keep reading here.—PK

If you have questions about the current state of generative AI, you might be hard-pressed to find one that’s not at least touched on in Stanford’s 434-page AI Index.

The report, from the university’s Institute for Human-Centered AI, covers everything from business adoption of AI and global regulation to research progress and its role in scientific discovery. We spoke with Stanford HAI’s director of research, Vanessa Parli, about some of the biggest takeaways from this year’s edition.

AGI nigh? AI models just keep improving on every test thrown their way. The report finds that the performance of AI systems on some of the most challenging benchmarks has improved rapidly in the past year. “There are very few task categories where human ability surpasses AI,” the authors write, and “the performance gap between AI and humans is shrinking rapidly.”

Given that finding, we asked Parli whether some of the more worrying headlines about AI and government leaders’ hand-wringing about artificial general intelligence coming sooner than previously thought are onto something.

“It’s very difficult to tell,” she said. “We are seeing, as we have for the past few years, that these AI tools are getting better and better and at a faster rate.”

Keep reading here.—PK

The future of transportation is arriving in NYC! Join us in person or via livestream to explore the latest in EVs, AVs, smart grids, and cybersecurity. Hear from experts at Waabi, it’s electric, MicroGrid Networks, Mercedes-Benz High-Power Charging, Rivian, and more as they discuss how tech is reshaping mobility. From AI-powered traffic management to next-gen battery breakthroughs, don’t miss this ride into the future. Register now!