Archive

January 2025

Browsing

Venezuela’s foreign minister on Monday accused opponents of President Nicolás Maduro as being linked to damages at the country’s diplomatic facilities in five nations.

Foreign Minister Yvan Gil in a statement said the vandalism was coordinated by grassroots groups known as “comanditos” – meaning small commandos – but he did not offer any evidence to back up the accusation, which comes three days after Maduro was sworn in to a third six-year term, despite credible evidence of his election defeat.

Gil said he has asked the authorities in Portugal, Germany, Spain, Colombia and Costa Rica to expedite their investigations “to find those responsible and to ensure the integrity of our facilities.” He did not say when exactly the diplomatic facilities were vandalized.

The main opposition coalition did not immediately respond to the minister’s accusations.

Law enforcement authorities in Lisbon, Portugal, are investigating a weekend attack with a small incendiary device that caused some minor damage on the façade of Venezuela’s consulate in that city.

Portugal’s Foreign Ministry in a statement Sunday called it and “intolerable act” and said it was reinforcing security in the area.

Portugal has a strong immigrant community in Venezuela, the second largest following Brazil.

According to official data by the diplomatic mission in the country, at least around 200,000 Portuguese nationals are registered in the country – a figure that does not include the descendants already born in Venezuela.

Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry on Monday released images of the alleged vandalism that Gil announced.

One shows hanging from a building a Venezuelan flag spray-painted with the word “Edmundo,” which is the first name of the opposition candidate recognized by several governments as the legitimate winner of Venezuela’s July presidential election.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, stacked with government loyalists, declared Maduro the election winner hours after polls closed. But unlike in previous contests, electoral authorities did not provide detailed vote counts to back the announced result.

The opposition, however, collected tally sheets from 85% of electronic voting machines and posted them online – showing its candidate, Edmundo González, had won by a more than a two-to-one margin.

UN experts and the US-based Carter Center, both invited by Maduro’s government to observe the election, said the tally sheets published by the opposition are legitimate.

The comanditos groups were formed by supporters of the main opposition coalition to encourage voter participation and organize other efforts for the July presidential election.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

As the boutique fitness sector starts to buckle, Barry’s Bootcamp on Monday announced new investment from Princeton Equity Group.

“The reason why this [boutique fitness] works for Barry’s is that our positioning in the marketplace is premium,” said Joey Gonzalez, Barry’s co-CEO, in an interview with CNBC. “We always want to minimize risks to any sort of brand dilution, and we only ever want to elevate the Barry’s experience.”

Gonzalez said this funding round will be focused on investing in client experience and brand positioning in a highly saturated industry. Barry’s offers high-intensity running, lifting and training classes in its trademark red-lit rooms.

Barry’s has 89 studios globally that saw more than 7 million visits in 2024.

Princeton is a franchisor and consumer services-focused private equity firm with $1.2 billion in assets under management. It has invested in other wellness brands such as spa chain Massage Envy and athletic training facility D1 Training.

The size of the investment was not disclosed.

The fresh capital for Barry’s adds to a list of private equity investments dating back nearly two decades from firms including LightBay Capital and North Castle Partners.

Gonzalez said Barry’s will use the investment in part to fund expansion in 12 U.S. cities this year, including Charleston, South Carolina; Hoboken, New Jersey; and Salt Lake City, as well as locations in Madrid, Athens and Dublin.

″[This partnership] is enabling us to consolidate our operations in the UK and Canada,” Gonzalez said. “We will now be overseeing operations in these countries where we can foster a closely knit community and create efficiencies.”

The broader global boutique fitness studio market was valued at nearly $48 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow to $86 billion in 2030, according to estimates from Research and Markets. Still, several high-profile brands have struggled to grow their customer base.

Xponential Fitness, a franchisor of health and wellness brands, divested from two struggling boutique chains — Stride Fitness and Row House — last year.

Jefferies analyst Randal Konik cited industry headwinds including macroeconomic concerns that could cause a pullback in consumer spending, and said fitness has proven to be more need-based with more people prioritizing health and wellness.

“Tailwinds will be the focus on health and wellness coming out of Covid,” Konik said, “as well as a move towards strength training, [which] has lifted demand for all types of fitness classes and gym membership.”

Piper Sandler analyst Korinne Wolfmeyer cited “uncertainty around unit growth” at Xponential as one of the main reasons to stay on the sidelines of the stock.

Gonzalez said his company is bucking the trend.

“I think of Barry’s as one of the originals, and a very back-to-basics approach to fitness with efficacy at the heart,” said Gonzalez. “What Barry’s has really done is stick to our core competency: fitness experience, immersive experience, member experience.”

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

Islamabad, Pakistan (Reuters) — Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai urged Muslim leaders on Sunday to back efforts to make gender apartheid a crime under international law, and called on them to speak out against Afghanistan’s Taliban over its treatment of women and girls.

At a summit on girls’ education in Muslim communities attended by international leaders and scholars in her home country of Pakistan, Yousafzai said Muslim voices must lead the way against the policies of the Taliban, who have barred teenage girls from school and women from universities.

“In Afghanistan an entire generation of girls will be robbed of its future,” she said in a speech in Islamabad. “As Muslim leaders, now is the time to raise your voice, use your power.”

The Taliban say they respect women’s rights in accordance with their interpretation of Afghan culture and Islamic law. Taliban administration spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Yousafzai’s statements.

No foreign government has formally recognized the Taliban since it took over Afghanistan in 2021 and diplomats have said steps towards recognition require a change of course on women’s rights.

Yousafzai survived being shot in the head when she was 15 in Pakistan by a gunman after campaigning against the Pakistani Taliban’s moves to deny girls an education.

The summit, organised by the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Muslim World League, included dozens of ministers and scholars from Muslim-majority countries.

Yousafzai asked the scholars to “openly challenge and denounce the Taliban’s oppressive laws” and for political leaders to support the addition of gender apartheid to crimes against humanity under international criminal law.

The summit was hosted by Pakistan, which has had frosty relations with the Afghan Taliban in recent months over accusations that militants are using Afghan soil to launch attacks on Pakistan, a charge the Taliban deny.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Meta on Friday told employees that its plans to end a number of internal programs designed to increase the company’s hiring of diverse candidates, the latest dramatic change ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s second White House term.

Janelle Gale, Meta’s vice president of people, made the announcement on the company’s Workplace internal communications forum.

Among the changes, Meta is ending the company’s “Diverse Slate Approach” of considering qualified candidates from underrepresented groups for its open roles. The company is also putting an end to its diversity supplier program and its equity and inclusion training programs. Gale also announced the disbanding of the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, team, and she said that Meta Chief Diversity Officer Maxine Williams will move into a new role focused on accessibility and engagement.

Several Meta employees responded to Gale’s post with comments criticizing the new policy.

“If you don’t stand by your principles when things get difficult, they aren’t values. They’re hobbies,” one employee posted in a comment that got reaction from more than 600 colleagues.

The DEI policy change follows a number of sweeping policy reversals by the social media company this month. Last week, Meta replaced global affairs head Nick Clegg with Joel Kaplan, a veteran at the company with longstanding ties to the Republican Party. On Tuesday, Zuckerberg announced a new speech policy that included bringing an end to the company’s third-party fact-checking program.

Axios was first to report the DEI changes at the social media company. Meta didn’t immediately provide a comment.

You can read Gale’s memo, which CNBC obtained, in full below:

Hi all,

I wanted to share some changes we’re making to our hiring, development, and procurement practices. Before getting into details, there is some important background to lay out:

The legal and policy landscape surrounding diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in the United States is changing. The Supreme Court of the United States has recently made decisions signaling a shift in how courts will approach DEI. It reaffirms long standing principles that discrimination should not be tolerated or promoted on the basis of inherent characteristics. The term “DEI” has also become charged, in part because it is understood by some as a practice that suggests preferential treatment of some groups over others.

At Meta, we have a principle of serving everyone. This can be achieved through cognitively diverse teams, with differences in knowledge, skills, political views, backgrounds, perspectives, and experiences. Such teams are better at innovating, solving complex problems and identifying new opportunities which ultimately helps us deliver on our ambition to build products that serve everyone. On top of that, we’ve always believed that no one should be given — or deprived — of opportunities because of protective characteristics, and that has not changed.

Given the shifting legal and policy landscape, we’re making the following changes:

On hiring, we will continue to source candidates from different backgrounds, but we will stop using the Diverse Slate Approach. This practice has always been subject to public debate and is currently being challenged. We believe there are other ways to build an industry leading workforce and leverage teams made up of world-class people from all types of backgrounds to build products that work for everyone.

We previously ended representation goals for women and ethnic minorities. Having goals can create the impression that decisions are being made based on race or gender. While this has never been our practice, we want to eliminate any impression of it.

We are sunsetting our supplier diversity effort within our broader supplier strategy. This effort focused on sourcing from diverse-owned businesses; going forward, we will focus our efforts on supporting small and medium sized businesses that power much of our economy. Opportunities will continue to be available to all qualified suppliers, including those who are part of the supplier diversity program.

Instead of equity and inclusion training programs, we will build programs that focus on how to apply fair and consistent practices that mitigate bias for all, no matter your background.

We will no longer have a team focused on DEI. Maxine Williams is taking on a new role at Meta focused on accessibility and engagement.

What remains the same are the principles we’ve used to guide our People Practices:

We serve everyone. We are committed to making our products accessible, beneficial and universally impactful for everyone.

We build the best teams with the most talented people. This means sourcing people from a range of candidate pools but never making hiring decisions based on protected characteristics, (e.g., race, gender, etc.). We will always evaluate people as individuals.

We drive consistency in employment practices to ensure fairness and objectivity for all. We do not provide preferential treatment, extra opportunities or unjustified credit to anyone based on protected characteristics. Nor will we devalue impact based on these characteristics.

We build connection and community. We support our employee communities, people who use our products and those in the communities. We operate our employee community groups (MRGs) continue to be open to all.

Meta has the privilege to serve billions of people every day. It is important to us that our products are accessible to all, and useful in promoting economic growth and opportunity around the world. We continue to be focused on serving everyone and building a multi-talented, industry-leading workforce from all walks of life.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

The markets extended their decline over the past five sessions and ended the week on a negative note. While the week started on a bearish note, the Nifty violated a few key levels on higher and lower time frame charts. Along with the weak undercurrent, the trading range widened again as the Nifty moved in a 745-point range. The volatility spiked up, and India Vix surged 10.16% to 14.91 on a weekly basis. Following a thoroughly bearish undertone, the headline index closed with a net weekly loss of 573.25 points (-2.39%).

The week that has gone by has remained important from a technical perspective. The Nifty started the week by violating the 200-DMA placed at 23940 and has closed significantly below this crucial level. On the weekly charts, the Nifty has breached another critical level of 50-week MA, currently at 23659. In the process, the Nifty has dragged its resistance points lower; any technical rebound will find resistance at this point. It is important to note that the 50-week MA has been violated after three retests, and the breach of this level will have bearish considerations for the markets. Unless the Nifty crosses above this level again, it will stay vulnerable to a prolonged phase of weakness.

Monday is likely to see the Nifty beginning on a soft note; the levels of 23650 and 23880 are likely to act as resistance points. The supports come in at 23300 and 23050 levels.

The weekly RSI is 43.53; it has marked a new 14-period low, which is bearish. The RSI also shows a bearish divergence against the price. The weekly MACD is bearish and stays below the signal line. The widening Histogram hints at accelerated momentum on the downside.

The pattern analysis of the weekly chart shows Nifty completing a painful process of mean reversion by finding support at the 50-week MA in November. Since then, it has retested this level three times and has breached it by closing below this crucial level. The 50-week MA is placed at 23659; so long as the Index stays below this point, it remains vulnerable to an extended period of weakness in the near term.

Over the past week, the technical developments have created a strong resistance zone for the Nifty between 23650-24000 level. So long as the Index stays below this zone, it will likely trade with a weak undercurrent. Given the current technical setup, cutting down on leveraged exposures and keeping them at modest levels is extremely important. While initiating fresh exposures, staying in the stocks with strong or improving Relative Strength will be necessary as that would provide resilience to the investments. While staying highly selective, a highly cautious outlook is recommended for the coming week.


Sector Analysis for the coming week

In our look at Relative Rotation Graphs®, we compared various sectors against CNX500 (NIFTY 500 Index), which represents over 95% of the free float market cap of all the stocks listed.

Relative Rotation Graphs (RRG) show that Nifty Bank, Services Sector, Nifty Financial Services, and Nifty IT indices are inside the leading quadrant. Barring the Nifty IT index, all others are seen giving up on their relative momentum. The Nifty Midcap 100 has rolled inside the leading quadrant and may relatively outperform the broader markets.

The Nifty Pharma Index stays inside the weakening quadrant.

The Nifty Metal Index has rolled inside the lagging quadrant. Along with the Media, PSE, Energy, and Commodities, it is likely to underperform the broader markets relatively. The Infrastructure, Auto, FMCG, and Consumption Indices are in the lagging quadrant but are improving their relative momentum against the broader markets.

The Nifty Realty index is well placed inside the improving quadrant. The PSU Bank Index is also inside the improving quadrant, but it is seen paring its relative momentum against the broader markets.


Important Note: RRG charts show the relative strength and momentum of a group of stocks. In the above Chart, they show relative performance against NIFTY500 Index (Broader Markets) and should not be used directly as buy or sell signals.  


Milan Vaishnav, CMT, MSTA

Consulting Technical Analyst

www.EquityResearch.asia | www.ChartWizard.ae

A former child star from Australia died when the Los Angeles wildfires ripped through his family’s Malibu estate in California earlier this week, according to his mother.

Rory Callum Sykes was at the family’s 17-acre Mount Malibu TV Studios estate, where he had his own cottage, when it burned down on January 8, his mother Shelley Sykes wrote on X Thursday.

Shelley Sykes described her son, who appeared on the 1998 British TV series “Kiddy Kapers,” as “beautiful” and “wonderful” and said she was “totally heart broken” by his death.

She said she had tried to put out the wildfire cinders on her property’s roof using a hose but couldn’t because the water wasn’t working.

“He said, ‘mom leave me’ and no mom can leave their kid. And I’ve got a broken arm, I couldn’t lift him, I couldn’t move him,” Sykes told Australia’s 10 News First.

Her son, 32, was born blind with cerebral palsy on July 29, 1992, and had become famous for his speeches on overcoming disability. He was the co-founder of Happy Charity, which according to its site offers, “Hope, Happiness & Health to those that are Hurting.”

“He overcame so much with surgeries and therapies to regain his sight and to be able to learn to walk. Despite the pain, he still enthused about traveling the world with me from Africa to Antarctica,” Shelley Sykes wrote on X.

She said her son was born in Britain but lived in Australia, then America. He was “a gift born on mine and his grandma’s birthday,” she wrote.

On his website, Sykes describes himself as a professional speaker and consultant for many companies including the Tony Robbins Foundation, and the Cerebral Palsy Alliance.

In an appearance with his mother on Australian television show “Mornings with Kerri-Anne” in 2003, he discussed going on a trip to the United States to speak at a Tony Robbins motivational conference.

“It doesn’t matter what happens to you in life, it’s what you do about it that counts,” he told viewers.

“The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to his family. Our thoughts are with them,” DFAT told 9News. “Owing to our privacy obligations we are unable to provide further comment.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Disney, Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery have called off plans to launch their sports streaming service, Venu, the companies said in a joint statement Friday.

“After careful consideration, we have collectively agreed to discontinue the Venu Sports joint venture and not launch the streaming service,” they said in the statement. “In an ever-changing marketplace, we determined that it was best to meet the evolving demands of sports fans by focusing on existing products and distribution channels. We are proud of the work that has been done on Venu to date and grateful to the Venu staff, whom we will support through this transition period.”

Venu was first announced in February and intended to combine the live sports assets of Fox, WBD and Disney-owned ESPN. It was initially slated to launch before the start of the NFL season in September, but was delayed in part by a legal challenge from internet TV bundler Fubo, which claimed the platform would be anticompetitive.

Together Disney, Fox and WBD control more than 50% of all U.S. sports media rights, and at least 60% of all nationally broadcast U.S. sports rights, according to the judge on the antitrust case.

The news that it would not launch came as a shock to Venu employees, who found out late Thursday night, according to people familiar with the matter. They believed they had a pathway forward to launch the service after Disney agreed earlier this week to merge its Hulu+ Live TV with Fubo, settling all litigation over Venu.

But the judge’s response in Fubo’s lawsuit questioned the legality of cable bundling in general, prompting Disney to strike the deal with Fubo, through which Disney would take 70% control of the resulting company. And two days ago, satellite providers DirecTV and Dish sent letters to federal court arguing that the legal questions brought up by the judge remained unanswered.

Rather than risk an extended lawsuit that could jeopardize bundling in general — including Disney’s efforts to bundle its own streaming entities (ESPN, Hulu and Disney+) — the three companies decided to pull the plug on Venu, according to people familiar with the company’s decisions.

Warner Bros. Discovery’s business model relies heavily on negotiating bundled carriage agreements for its many cable networks, including CNN, TNT, HGTV and Food Network.

Disney is targeting a debut of ESPN “Flagship,” an all-inclusive ESPN streaming service, for August 2025. The still unnamed ESPN streaming service will including everything that airs on ESPN’s linear network, unlike ESPN+.

Disney’s deal with Fubo, along with the company’s recent carriage renewal with DirecTV, also gives the company new ways to package so-called skinny bundles — narrower selections of channels for less money. This was the idea behind Venu: selling a smaller number of linear channels for less money than traditional cable TV.

Disclosure: Comcast, which owns CNBC parent NBCUniversal, is a co-owner of Hulu.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

The composition of the top five sectors remains unchanged this week, despite an interrupted trading week. This stability comes against a backdrop of mixed signals and potential defensive rotation in the broader market. Let’s dive into the details and see how these sectors are holding up.

  1. XLY, Consumer Discretionary
  2. XLC, Communication Services
  3. XLF, Financials
  4. XLK, Information Technology
  5. XLI, Industrials

Performance-wise, our equal-weight portfolio of these sectors is down 0.66% against SPY, which itself is down 0.44%. (Note: This analysis is based on data about an hour before market close on Friday, January 10th. Any significant shifts after this time will be addressed in a weekend update if necessary.)

Sector-by-Sector Analysis

Consumer Discretionary: Strong Despite Decline

Consumer Discretionary remains well above its breakout level, which took out the peak of 2021. As a result, the sector has some room to decline — say, back to the support area around 210 — without harming the uptrend. This resilience keeps Consumer Discretionary in a very strong position despite the current price decline.

Communication Services: Promising but Precarious

The Communication Services sector is holding up from a relative perspective. While the relative strength line and RRG lines are still positive, the RS momentum line is stalling. This is causing the tail on the RRG to roll over, albeit still inside the leading quadrant.

The biggest concern for XLC comes from the price chart. After breaking out in November 2024, the sector is dropping back into the boundaries of its old rising channel. In my experience, when price retreats into a rising channel after an upside breakout, it often tests the lower boundary. For XLC, this could mean a drawback to around 90-92.5 — a support area marked by the rising support line of the old channel.

Financials: Breaking Down

XLF, after a few weeks of consolidation, now seems to be breaking a rising trend line. It’s also close to taking out the previous low around 47.60. If we close below this level on the weekly chart, we’ll have a confirmed lower low and lower high in place for XLF — opening up the downside towards the first support level around 46.

Relative strength for XLF is dropping back below its previous resistance level, which should have acted as support, but isn’t. This is causing the RRG lines to roll over, with XLF’s weekly tail close to crossing from leading into the weakening quadrant.

Technology: Stable but Facing Resistance

The technology sector has remained relatively stable, trading in a condensed area with high volatility over the last 2-3 months.

XLK hasn’t managed to break above the resistance just above 240, which is therefore becoming increasingly heavy. However, it’s still within its rising channel, with potential support of around 222. XLK’s relative strength remains stable, slightly moving higher within its trading range, which is causing both RRG lines to move higher.

With RS ratio below 100 and RS momentum above 100, XLK’s tail is inside the improving quadrant with a positive heading — which continues to make it one of the better sectors.

Industrials: On the Edge

The industrial sector, still number 5 on our list, is testing the lower boundary of its rising channel. So far, it hasn’t broken down.

Relative strength is slowing down, continuing the trend from last week. The tail is still inside the weakening quadrant heading for lagging, but the price decline seems to be stalling at the current level.

Industrials is on the edge — a definitive break out of the rising channel would add to its weakness and lead to even weaker relative strength. For now, though, it’s holding above support despite the loss of relative strength.

RRG Analysis: A Mixed Picture

It’s interesting to note that on the RRG for all sectors, our top five are located either in the leading quadrant (XLY, XLC, XLF), the weakening quadrant (XLI), or the improving quadrant (XLK). All other sectors are inside the lagging quadrant, none with a positive heading.

This RRG isn’t the strongest I’ve ever seen, but it’s all a relative game — and that’s what this experiment is about. We’re trying to beat the S&P 500, so we need to be in the sectors furthest to the right, preferably with a strong heading.

Daily RRG: Signs of Defensive Rotation

When we look at the daily RRG, the picture shifts. While XLC, XLK, and XLY are still furthest to the right (albeit without the strongest headings), XLI and XLF are inside the improving quadrant, rapidly heading towards leading. A quick analysis of other sectors shows Utilities (XLU), Health Care (XLV), and Energy (XLE) rapidly approaching the leading quadrant — indicating a more defensive rotation in the near term.

What’s Next?

The daily RRG’s defensive rotation is translating into a weaker chart for SPY. I’ll be creating a separate article focusing more on the development in the S&P 500 to keep it distinct from this “Best 5 Sectors” series. Be on the lookout for that additional analysis shortly.

#StayAlert and have a great weekend. –Julius


Brazil’s government will give Meta until Monday to explain the changes to its fact-checking program, Solicitor General Jorge Messias said on Friday.

The move comes after the social media company scrapped its US fact-checking program and reduced curbs on discussions around topics such as immigration and gender identity.

It is not immediately clear exactly what will happen after the deadline expires.

“I’d like to express the Brazilian government’s enormous concern about the policy adopted by the Meta company, which is like an airport windsock, changing its position all the time according to the winds,” Messias, the government’s top lawyer, told reporters in Brasilia.

“Brazilian society will not be at the mercy of this kind of policy,” Messias added.

On Thursday, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said the changes were “extremely serious” and announced he had called a meeting to discuss the topic.

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In announcing the move on Tuesday, CEO Mark Zuckerberg cited “too many mistakes and too much censorship.” A spokesperson said on Tuesday that, for now, Meta was planning the changes only for the US market.

Reuters, which was a Meta partner on its US fact-checking program, has declined to comment.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

Microsoft is cutting a small percentage of jobs across departments, based on performance, the company confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.

“At Microsoft we focus on high-performance talent,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an email to CNBC on Wednesday. “We are always working on helping people learn and grow. When people are not performing, we take the appropriate action.”

Business Insider reported on the plans late Tuesday.

The job cuts will affect less than 1% of employees, said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named in order to discuss private information.

Microsoft had 228,000 employees at the end of June. While the company’s net income margin of nearly 38% is close to its highest since the early 2000s, Microsoft’s stock underperformed its peers last year, rising 12% while the Nasdaq gained 29%.

Microsoft’s latest cuts are slim compared with recent downsizing efforts.

In early 2023, the company laid off 10,000 employees and consolidated leases. In January 2024, three months after completing the $75.4 billion Activision Blizzard acquisition, Microsoft’s gaming unit shed 1,900 jobs to reduce overlap.

As 2025 begins, Microsoft faces a more tenuous relationship with artificial intelligence startup OpenAI, which the company has backed to the tune of more than $13 billion. The partnership helped propel Microsoft’s market cap past $3 trillion last year.

Over the summer, Microsoft added OpenAI to its list of competitors. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella used the phrase “cooperation tension” while discussing the relationship with investors Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley on a podcast released last month.

Meanwhile, the Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant, which draws on OpenAI technology, has yet to become pervasive in business. Analysts at UBS said in a note last month that they came away from Microsoft’s Ignite conference with the impression that Copilot rollouts “have been a bit slow/underwhelming.”

Microsoft is still touting its growth opportunities. Finance chief Amy Hood said in October that revenue growth from Microsoft’s Azure cloud will speed up in the first half of this year because of greater AI infrastructure capacity.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS