Buzzworthy AI: Microsoft expands its Premonition mosquito-tracking outbreak prediction system

Principal hardware architect Nicolas Villar puts the Premonition mosquito-tracking system through its paces in a Microsoft lab. (Microsoft Photo)

Five years after starting out as an experimental project to see if advanced sensors and artificial intelligence could spot the signs of a disease outbreak before it happens, Microsoft Premonition is turning into an honest-to-goodness biothreat protection network.

Premonition’s researchers aim to set up about 100 sensor stations in Texas’ Harris County, to track swarms of mosquitoes that could transmit diseases ranging from malaria and dengue fever to Zika and West Nile viruses. AI algorithms will analyze that tracking data for the telltale signs of an epidemic in the making, just as weather forecasting programs look for the signs of a storm on the way.

“It will really be almost like a weather map, the likes of which has not really been seen before in the mosquito vector space,” Ethan Jackson, senior director of Microsoft Premonition, told Geekwire.

The expansion of the Premonition program was announced today in conjunction with this week’s annual Microsoft Ignite conference for software developers.

Harris County, dominated by the city of Houston with a population of 4.7 million, was the site for Microsoft Premonition’s earliest experiments. Those field tests were aimed at determining whether sensor-equipped mosquito traps could identify the particular types of mosquito that causes particular diseases — for example, Anopheles mosquitoes for malaria, Aedes mosquitoes for Zika and dengue, Culex mosquitoes for West Nile.

Microsoft researchers found that they could, based on data from optical sensors that tracked the beat of the mosquitoes’ wings. During 2016’s field tests in Harris County, the system recorded a 90% accuracy rate for identifying the mosquitoes linked to the Zika virus. That’s no small feat, considering that there are 3,600 known species of mosquitoes, 50 of which are active in Harris County.

Since then, Jackson and his colleagues have widened the system’s capabilities by bringing wild mosquitoes to a custom-built facility on Microsoft’s campus in Redmond, Wash., known as the Premonition Proving Ground.

“This is Microsoft’s first biocontainment facility,” Jackson said. “It’s unique in its ability to allow us to import wild species, rear them up from eggs, and then digitize them in our sensors so that we can pre-train our classifiers.”

Researchers can then check test their robotic traps and digitized models with real-life mosquitoes. “We have a feedback loop, an agile engineering loop that’s happening at Microsoft,” Jackson said.

Microsoft researchers evaluate robotic designs and train artificial intelligence models to recognize different species of mosquitoes inside a biosecure “Premonition Proving Ground” on the Redmond campus. (Microsoft Photo)

The lab experiments helped Microsoft fine-tune Premonition’s tools.

“We’re at a place now where we’re ready to go back and try these systems at scale, and see what happens when you instrument this city with these kinds of systems so you’re getting 24/7 monitoring of the biome,” Jackson said.

Umair Shah, executive director of Harris County Public Health, hopes the technology’s impact won’t be limited to mosquito-borne diseases.

“This partnership will also evaluate new genomic capabilities to detect known and emerging pathogens from environmental samples, which we now know is especially important for diseases like COVID-19,” he said in a Microsoft blog posting..

Being able to predict where an outbreak might blossom would help public health officials stay a step ahead — for example, by using pesticides in targeted areas to tamp down mosquito swarms, or ramping up localized strategies to catch coronavirus before it spreads.

One of Microsoft’s corporate partners on Premonition is Bayer, which is participating in an industry campaign to eradicate malaria by 2040. Jacqueline Applegate, president of Global Vegetable Seeds and Environmental Science at Bayer, said Microsoft Premonition will help Bayer “be even more prescriptive and optimize our vector control strategies so that they have the greatest impact.”

Over the past five years, Microsoft Premonition’s technologies have been tested at sites ranging from the sands of the Florida Keys to the forests of Tanzania. Jackson said the follow-up experiments have shown that sensor networks can pick up a wide spectrum of information about biological interactions in ecosystems.

To explore the wider applications, Microsoft is partnering with academic researchers at Vanderbilt University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Pittsburgh and the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. This month, the academic consortium began a $924,000 project funded by the National Science Foundation to develop predictive models of ecosystem-wide activity.

Jackson marveled at how his perspective on Premonition has progressed.

“When we first started this project, we were asking, how could you understand biological threats from the perspective of a mosquito? That was the science question that drove our initial engineering,” he said. “We’ve really evolved from that question to say there’s a set of technologies that form a sensor network, and that sensor network is the thing that’s missing today.”

After five years, Microsoft says it’s ready to fill in that missing piece.

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Former Amazon, Microsoft engineers raise $120K for Seattle cloud startup Cloudshim

A new startup out of Seattle called Cloudshim just raised $120,000 to help grow the company’s self-serve cloud management platform.

Founded by two brothers who previously worked at Microsoft and Amazon — Lokesh Taneja and Vishal Taneja — Cloudshim aims to help companies manage cloud infrastructure services and track associated cloud costs.

“Most competitor products have gone upmarket, tailoring their product around enterprise requirements,” said Lokesh Taneja. “This has left a void to be filled for customers that just want a simple and quick way to manage their cloud without heavy contractual processes.”

The software currently supports Amazon Web Services users but will soon expand to Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

Black Lion Ventures was the sole investor in the “pre-seed” round. Cloudshim plans to raise a larger round in the next year. The company employs nine people.

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Microsoft muestra sus indies de ID@Xbox y Game Pass

Las grandes compañías han estado presentes en la feria GamesCom 2020 para hablar de sus productos, sobre todo sus juegos independientes y experimentales. Microsoft ha mostrado su extenso catalogo indie de sus servicios ID@Xbox y Game Pass mediante un rumboso tráiler, al estilo de la casa.

El tráiler muestra fragmentos de populares juegos ya disponibles y otros prometedores aún por venir:

-Gonner 2
-Carrion
-Drake Hollow
-Double Kick Heroes
-Human: Fall Flat
-Slay the Spire
-Dead Cells
-Spiritfarer
-Unto the End
-Star Renegades
-Haven
-Crusader Kings III
-Golf With Your Friends
-Untitled Goose Game
-CrossCode
-Descenders
-Backbone

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Microsoft president says broadband connectivity is ‘the electricity of our age’

Microsoft President Brad Smith and Axios co-founder Mike Allen talk broadband in a live-streamed interview. (Axios livestream)

Microsoft President Brad Smith again made the case for the urgent need for broadband internet access to reach America’s rural communities, comparing connectivity to a utility as important as electricity.

In a live-streamed interview Thursday with Axios co-founder Mike Allen, Smith noted that quick internet speeds are the key to everything from remote learning, telehealth and small business growth.

“Even post-COVID, the importance of the broadband gap is not going abate one bit,” he said. “It will remain just as important to our future as it is right now.”

 Even post COVID the importance of the broadband gap is not going abate one bit.

Smith and Allen talked about some of Microsoft’s initiatives to improve access, including efforts in rural Ferry County in Northeast Washington state and in Charlotte, N.C., the site of the current Republican National Convention. The conversation about broadband was part of an RNC-pegged event and included interviews between Allen, U.S. Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, and Frank Luntz, a GOP strategist.

Smith shared details about the Washington broadband project, which taps unused spectrum from TVs and pairs it with a receiving device that allows for WiFi at the speed of broadband.

Roughly half of Washington households have access to fast broadband, according to the state’s broadband office, as reported this month by the Seattle Times. As students are returning to school, a lack of internet connection puts some kids at a disadvantage.

“Right now you can’t go to school virtually in an effective way if you don’t have access to broadband and you don’t have access to a good computing device,” Smith said.

Microsoft has made broadband expansion a focus area for the corporation, including its Microsoft Airband Initiative. Smith blogged about the issue in May, including calls for federal policy changes.

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Microsoft adds automatic transcription to Word on the web — here’s how it works

Testing the new transcription feature, available starting today in Microsoft Word on the web.

Microsoft is adding automated transcription to Word on the web, giving Microsoft 365 subscribers unlimited transcriptions of recordings made through the program at no extra cost, and up to five hours of free transcription per month for audio recorded and uploaded separately.

The new feature, announced this morning, will compete with free and paid automatic transcription services and programs such as Otter.ai, Temi, Google Live Transcribe, Nuance’s Dragon software, and others. There are hundreds of millions of Microsoft 365 subscribers who have access to Word and other Office programs, increasing the potential impact of Microsoft’s move.

Advances in artificial intelligence and speech recognition have made automatic transcription a viable, if not yet fully accurate, alternative to human transcription in many scenarios. The shift to virtual meetings has also fueled the demand for automatic transcription, as users take advantage of built-in recording features in video conferencing services.

In another high-profile example, Zoom and Otter.ai rolled out a transcription feature as part of paid subscription plans earlier this year.

As a feature of Word on the web, Microsoft’s new automatic transcription will work on any computer and with any meeting software, including but not limited to Microsoft Teams, the company said. Automatic transcription is slated to be added later this year to Microsoft Word apps for iOS and Android. The feature could come to Microsoft Word for desktop in the future, as well.

Microsoft’s transcription feature is available starting today to Microsoft 365 subscribers under the “dictate” icon in Word on the web. When active, the feature appears in a pane in the right-hand side of the browser window, offering the ability to start recording a recording for transcription through the program or upload recordings made separately.

The transcript appears first in that right-hand pane, with the option to edit the text and copy the full transcript or individual paragraphs into the main Word document.

The company decided not to display the transcription in real-time for now, opting instead to show the transcribed text after the recording is completed. That decision was the result of user testing, although Microsoft is open to considering real-time display of the transcription in the future, said Dan Parish, Microsoft principal group PM manager, in a briefing with reporters this week.

“People found it distracting, if you’re actually doing an interview, to see the text appear in real time … and so the current design purposefully obfuscates that,” Parish said. “If that’s something that people think is really valuable, or if there’s a bunch of feedback about that, we can look at changing the model to show it in real time.”

The transcription is taking place in the background, reducing the time required for processing after the conversation is completed to a matter of minutes, the company says.

When audio is being recorded, there is a red icon in the browser tab, and a timer indicating that the recording is active, but one downside we noticed in our initial usage is that there is no sound meter or other means to confirm that the audio is actually registering on the recording, which could be a concern given the fickle nature of microphone settings in many computers.

In addition, there is currently no option to purchase additional minutes for uploading beyond the limit of 300 minutes per month, but the company says it is considering the option to pay for extra upload minutes in the future. There is no limit on the transcription of audio recorded directly through Microsoft Word on the web.

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Tech Moves: Leafly names CEO; early Amazon exec departs; Microsoft vet named DocuSign CTO; ex-Vicis CEO lands new gig; more

Yoko Miyashita (Leafly Photo).

— Leafly General Counsel Yoko Miyashita will take over as chief executive officer from outgoing CEO Tim Leslie.

Miyashita joined the Seattle-based online cannabis platform last year and previously spent more than a decade in corporate and general counsel at Getty Images, also headquartered in Seattle.

Leslie was appointed Leafly’s CEO in March of 2019 after serving as VP of Amazon Prime Video International. He spent more than 20 years at Amazon and will remain at Leafly for a brief transition period.

Leafly went through two rounds of layoffs this year before raising $3.6 million in May.

— Audio technology company Sonos named Microsoft Chief Product Officer Panos Panay to its board of directors. Read the story.

Kamal Hathi (DocuSign Photo).

— DocuSign announced 20-year Microsoft veteran Kamal Hathi as its new chief technology officer. In his new role, he will support the DocuSign Agreement Cloud, the publicly-traded company’s new product aimed at expanding beyond its e-signature platform.

Founded in Seattle and now headquartered in San Francisco, DocuSign joined the Nasdaq 100 in June, bumping off United Airlines. The company still has a significant workforce in Seattle.

Hathi was most recently chief product and technology officer for Trader Interactive, a provider of digital marketplaces and advertising products for the recreational and commercial vehicle industries. He remains on the board of Trader Interactive and also serves on the board of Slickdeals.

Hathi departed Microsoft in 2018; at the time he was general manager for Power BI. He previously worked on the SQL Server Analysis Services and MSN teams.

Dave Marver. (Vicis Photo)

— Former Vicis CEO Dave Marver has been appointed CEO of GTX Medical, a medical device company based in the Netherlands and Switzerland developing technology to treat spinal cord injuries.

A co-founder of Vicis, Marver stepped down from the Seattle-based high-tech football helmet maker in November last year. A month later, the company folded and its assets sold for $2.85 million in April.

Marver is a medical device industry veteran who spent more than a decade at Medtronic. He was previously CEO of JointMetrix Medical and Cardiac Science Corporation.

— Seattle-based Redfin announced Kerry Chandler has joined its board of directors. Chandler is currently the chief human resources officer for global entertainment and sports company Endeavor.

“Kerry’s human resources experience at high-growth businesses adds a crucial area of expertise to our board,” said Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman.

Chandler has been a human resources executive at Under Armor, Christie’s, NBA, Walt Disney and IBM.

Former Amazon Books VP Jennifer Cast stands inside Amazon’s first physical retail location in Seattle. (GeekWire File Photo)

— Amazon’s vice president of specialty recruiting Jennifer Cast has departed the e-commerce giant. In a post on LinkedIn, Cast wrote that she is taking the summer off to plan the next stage of her career.

Cast initially joined Amazon in 1996 as the 25th employee, and departed in 2001 after a stint as vice president of books, music, video and digital. In 2014, she returned to oversee Amazon Books, the company’s first foray into physical retail. Cast transitioned to her most recent role leading specialty talent acquisition in 2018.

“I believe Amazon’s culture is stronger and employees are just as (if not more) customer obsessed now than when I first joined. Viva Amazon Leadership Principles!” Cast wrote in the post.

— Seattle startup DroneSeed added Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning to its board as an observer. Founded in 2016, DroneSeed uses drones to accelerate the reforestation process after wildfires.

“Technical innovations like this – that benefit both people and the larger environment – are exactly why I’m eager to be on the board,” said Tarpenning.

Tarpenning is currently a partner at Spero Ventures, a San Francisco Bay Area firm focused on early stage venture capital. Spero is an investor in DroneSeed.

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Cloud startup Snowflake reveals financials in IPO filing as it battles Amazon, Microsoft, others

Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman. (Snowflake Photo)

Cloud computing startup Snowflake Computing filed for an IPO on Monday, revealing its financial data for the first time as the company prepares to go public.

The San Mateo, Calif.-based company said it more than doubled revenue to $242 million in the first half of 2020, with a net loss of $171.3 million, down from $177 million in 2019.

Snowflake’s data warehouse is a specialized type of cloud database built for analytical applications. The company has more than 3,100 customers including Brex, ConAgra Foods, Domino’s, JetBlue, and Nationwide. It has more than 20 offices worldwide, including a Seattle hub, and is one of the most valuable private tech startups in the world.

(Click to enlarge)

Founded in 2012, Snowflake sits in a unique position among other cloud service providers, partnering with giants such as Amazon and Microsoft but also competing against them.

In its IPO filing, Snowflake listed Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud Platform under potential risk factors to the business. All three competitors offer their own data warehousing service.

Snowflake said a substantial majority of its business runs on AWS. From the filing:

“There is risk that one or more of these public cloud providers could use their respective control of their public clouds to embed innovations or privileged interoperating capabilities in competing products, bundle competing products, provide us unfavorable pricing, leverage its public cloud customer relationships to exclude us from opportunities, and treat us and our customers differently with respect to terms and conditions or regulatory requirements than it would treat its similarly situated customers. Further, they have the resources to acquire or partner with existing and emerging providers of competing technology and thereby accelerate adoption of those competing technologies. All of the foregoing could make it difficult or impossible for us to provide products and services that compete favorably with those of the public cloud providers.”

Longtime Microsoft executive Bob Muglia previously led Snowflake as CEO for five years but stepped down in May 2019. Frank Slootman, who ran ServiceNow as chairman and CEO from 2011 to 2017, now leads the company.

Slootman owns 5.9% of the company while Muglia owns 3.3%, according to the IPO filing. The largest shareholder is Sutter Hill Ventures with a 20.3% stake.

Dragoneer Investment Group — a backer of Airbnb, Slack, Spotify, Uber and other giants — led a $479 million Series G round in February and Salesforce Ventures participated for the first time. That round valued Snowflake at $12.4 billion.

Seattle-based Madrona Venture Group is another investors, though it is not listed in IPO documents as the firm owns less than 5% of the company. Other backers include Altimeter; ICONIQ Capital; Redpoint Ventures; and Sequoia.

Snowflake was one of five tech companies to file for IPOs on Monday alone as tech IPOs continue despite the ongoing pandemic and economic crisis. Many companies have traded higher since debuting on the public markets over the past several months.

Software startups that filed for IPOs *today*:
– Snowflake
– Unity
– JFrog
– Sumo Logic

And now: Asana https://t.co/bcnC63kp5E

— Deirdre Bosa (@dee_bosa) August 24, 2020

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Microsoft cloud vets raise $26M for drug prescription data platform Prescryptive Health

Prescryptive CEO Chris-Blackley. (Prescryptive Photo)

Seattle startup Prescryptive Health raised $26 million for its prescription data platform software.

Founded in 2017 by Microsoft commercial cloud vets Chris Blackley and Kevin Young, the company works with employers to help inform employees about prescription drug prices and other related information. It has direct connection to more than 50,000 pharmacies in its national network. The platform integrates in real-time with benefit plans and providers at the point of care.

“Our platform reduces benefit costs without reducing benefits — that’s good for both employers and employees, especially during this time,” Blackley said.

Morningside Ventures led the round, which included participation from SeaChange Fund and Pallasite Ventures. Morningside co-founder Dr. Gerald Chan joined the board.

Total funding to date for the 30-person company is $35 million.

Prescryptive is one of many digital health startups attracting investor interest this year. Venture funding for the U.S. digital health sector is expected to break a new record in 2020; companies already raised $5.4 billion through June, according to RockHealth.

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Former Microsoft leader and FiftyThree co-founder Georg Petschnigg on TikTok, Surface Duo, more

Georg Petschnigg. (WeTransfer Photo)

Georg Petschnigg learned a lot during an 10-year career at Microsoft, where he worked on various consumer products such as PowerPoint and Microsoft Courier. He also got an inside look at how the tech giant integrated various acquisitions of companies including Visio, Danger, and Nokia.

We caught up with Petschnigg to get his take on Microsoft’s bid for TikTok, its new Surface Duo device, and more. Petschnigg left Microsoft in 2011 to help launch FiftyThree, best known for developing the popular drawing app Paper and presentation tool Paste. File-sharing company WeTransfer acquired Paper and Paste in 2018, expanding the company’s reach into creative tools. Petschnigg is now chief innovation officer at WeTransfer.

What was your initial reaction to Microsoft’s pursuit of TikTok?

My first thought was that a Microsoft acquisition of TikTok makes total sense when you think about Microsoft’s business and history. Microsoft has put significant muscle and resources into artificial intelligence and machine learning, and invested hundreds of millions over the years in building out Microsoft Research. These investments have paid off in many ways, like with Azure Cognitive Services and Cortana, but Microsoft doesn’t have a great AI-based vehicle for entertainment.

The beauty of TikTok is that it combines content distribution to a large audience with technical, media and user interface inventions with ML at the core. These are all areas that Microsoft has experimented with, but hasn’t truly put together in a compelling end-to-end manner for consumers. In this way Tik Tok defines a new paradigm for software which Microsoft wants to be part of.

If Microsoft does indeed acquire part of TikTok’s operations, how do you expect the company to handle it? Will it follow similar acquisitions in the past or be different?

Microsoft has gotten smarter in handling acquisitions over the years, especially when it comes to integrating tools or apps into their broader ecosystem. I saw many acquisitions at Microsoft and incorporated key learnings when Paper and Paste, the creative/productivity apps I developed at FiftyThree, were acquired by WeTransfer in 2018.

A good model here is the acquisition of Accompli which became Outlook for Mobile or Bungie (developers of Halo). The leadership of those teams were empowered to drive cultural change within Microsoft. Accompli helped Microsoft understand mobile development for iOS and Android. Bungie brought in AAA gaming DNA. With TikTok, Microsoft could accelerate the embrace of ML at the core of software development. That said, TikTok would probably remain a standalone app vs. being integrated into the larger Microsoft suite.

(Bigstock Photo)

What are the biggest upsides or opportunities to Microsoft acquiring TikTok? And what about downsides or challenges?

There’s enormous opportunity to interpret content within videos. TikTok has perfected a blend of entertainment and machine learning – every time you watch a video, TikTok interprets your micro-interactions (scrolls, dwells, taps) to determine the next video to show you and keep you entertained.

Microsoft’s entertainment business has primarily focused on gaming and they haven’t developed any entertainment apps for consumers. With TikTok, they acquire a partner to extend consumer reach with a really powerful AI core.

An acquisition also means that Microsoft draws a spotlight to itself around data collection, a conversation that, by and large, they’ve managed to address better than say Google or Facebook, but certainly will draw them into a geo-political fray.

You say TikTok is Cortana for entertainment. What do you mean by that?

Up until now digital assistants like Alexa or Siri just never had a good answer if you would ask them “show me an entertaining video.” Often even the jokes it tells are canned. However, showing you entertaining videos is what TikTok is really good at doing — that’s what made me think TikTok could be Microsoft’s Cortana for entertainment.

It’s not a coincidence that TikTok has surged in popularity; the developers created a really powerful and compelling blend of machine learning that gives people content they want to see, and a simple UX that keeps people in the app. When people use TikTok for the first time, it understands their gender, region, age, and content interests. No other app does this so quickly and easily. TikTok also goes against the grain of most media or social apps that require you to choose categories of interest (Pinterest), rate films (Netflix), or follow people (Facebook) before you get to see content.

Surface Duo. (Microsoft Photo)

You led the incubation for Microsoft Courier. What are your thoughts on the Surface Duo? Do you think Microsoft will be able to establish a new form factor?

I have so many thoughts here, but in short, yes, I think Microsoft will establish the Duo as a new form factor. It will go further than that. It will define Microsoft’s take on mobile productivity and creativity.

The core insight for Courier, and the dual screen design, came from Abigail Sellen’s research in the “Myth of the Paperless Office.” She shared that the fold, two pages side-by-side, are integral to cognitive tasks such as comparing, organizing, sorting – the building blocks of making sense of digital work. Single screen solutions on mobile just do not feel right. The screen is either too small, or in the case of the iPad side-by-side still feels wonky. With Courier we saw the power of the form factor, and the foldable design means you get twice the screen.

Microsoft is very serious about this idea and embraced it. The fact that Microsoft is shipping this device with Android shows that they are putting the user experience first and technology ambitions second. Keep in mind that Ballmer canceled Courier over concerns that it would not fit in the One Windows strategy. Times have really changed.

Lastly I wouldn’t be surprised if Google and Microsoft invest in a new app store based on Android for the Surface Duo. I can see a new ecosystem of applications for productivity and creativity emerging around this form factor.

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Microsoft, PNNL and UW leap into White House’s $1B initiative for AI and quantum research

Krysta Svore, who leads the Microsoft Quantum – Redmond group at Microsoft Research, explains how quantum computing hardware works at a Seattle science meeting in February. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

Microsoft, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Washington are playing supporting roles in the White House’s $1 billion effort to advance research into artificial intelligence and quantum information science.

Those three organizations have already been working together through the Northwest Quantum Nexus to develop the infrastructure for quantum computers, which promise to open up new possibilities in fields ranging from chemistry to systems optimization and financial modeling.

The initiatives announced today are likely to accelerate progress toward the development of commercial-scale quantum computers, Chetan Nayak, Microsoft’s general manager for quantum hardware, said in a blog posting.

“Today marks one of the U.S. government’s largest investments in the field,” he said. “It is also a noteworthy moment for Microsoft, which is providing scientific leadership in addition to expertise in workforce development and technology transfer.”

Over the next five years, the U.S. Department of Energy will set aside up to $625 million to support five quantum computing research centers led by teams at the Argonne, Brookhaven, Fermi, Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories. Contributions from the private sector and academia will add up to another $300 million.

Microsoft, PNNL and UW are among the partners in the Quantum Science Center, which is headed up by Oak Ridge and aims to address the tough scientific challenges surrounding quantum processing. In contrast to the sharply defined one-or-zero world of classical computing, quantum computers work with quantum bits, or qubits, which can reflect multiple values simultaneously.

Microsoft and PNNL are also part of the public-private consortium known as Q-NEXT, which is led by Argonne National Laboratory. Next Generation Quantum Science and Engineering will focus on building the infrastructure for quantum computing technology. (Boeing is also a Q-NEXT partner.)

Researchers from PNNL and UW are also partnering in the Co-design Center for Quantum Advantage, or C2QA, with Brookhaven National Laboratory taking the leading role. C2QA will focus on taking advantage of quantum phenomena for high-energy and nuclear physics, chemistry, materials science and other fields.

Microsoft is also represented on the external advisory board for the Quantum Science Accelerator, which is led by the Berkeley Lab in partnership with Sandia National Laboratory. The fifth DOE-funded center is the Superconducting Quantum Materials and Systems Center, led by Fermilab.

“Realizing the promise of quantum computing is beyond the capacity of any single institution, public or private,” PNNL Director Steven Ashby said.

“The power of these new quantum sciences centers lies in the partnerships that will be forged among the national laboratories, leading universities and other research institutions,” he said in a news release. “We are proud that PNNL scientists and engineers will participate in three centers, applying their expertise to the quest to build a reliable quantum computer and to use it to solve the most pressing problems in science and energy.”

Just today, researchers from PNNL and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology addressed one of the challenges facing quantum computing.

In a paper published by the journal Nature, they reported that radiation from natural sources in the environment can limit the performance of superconducting qubits. Such radiation can emanate from earthly materials such as concrete, or rain down through the atmosphere in the form of cosmic rays.

“Our study is the first to show clearly that low-level ionizing radiation in the environment degrades the performance of superconducting qubits,” PNNL’s John Orrell, a study co-author and an expert in low-level radiation measurement, said in a news release. “These findings suggest that radiation shielding will be necessary to attain long-sought performance in quantum computers of this design.”

The newly published findings have immediate implications for qubit design and construction. For example, the researchers say the materials used to construct quantum computers should exclude material that emits radiation.

In addition, it may be necessary to shield experimental quantum computers from radiation in the atmosphere. That may make PNNL’s Shallow Underground Laboratory, which reduces surface radiation exposure by 99%, an attractive option for future quantum computer development.

The study could also influence the future course of research into the nature of dark matter, a mysterious constituent of the universe which is thought to be almost six times as plentiful as ordinary matter. One approach to detecting dark matter calls for using superconducting detectors with elements that are similar to qubits.

“Improving our understanding of this process may lead to improved designs for these superconducting sensors and lead to more sensitive dark matter searches,” said Ben Loer, a PNNL research physicist who is working both in dark matter detection and radiation effects on superconducting qubits.

In addition to the five quantum research centers, the $1 billion initiative establishes seven AI research institutes at universities across the country.

Working with other federal agencies, the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture will set aside $140 million over the next five years for these institutes:

NSF AI Institute for Research on Trustworthy AI in Weather, Climate and Coastal Oceanography, led by a team at the University of Oklahoma at Norman.NSF AI Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning, led by a team at the University of Texas at Austin.NSF AI Institute for Student-AI Teaming, led by a team at the University of Colorado at Boulder.NSF AI Institute for Molecular Discovery, Synthetic Strategy and Manufacturing (or the NSF Molecule Maker Lab), led by a team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.NSF AI Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Fundamental Interactions, led by a team at MIT.USDA-NIFA AI Institute for Next Generation Food Systems, led by a team at the University of California at Davis.USDA-NIFA AI Institute for Future Agricultural Resilience, Management and Sustainability, led by a team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“The National AI Institutes being awarded today comprise large, multi-disciplinary and multi-sector collaborations,” Michael Kartsios, the White House’s chief technology officer, said in a news release. “They bring together consortia of dozens of universities and other organizations, ultimately spanning academia, government and industry.”

NSF is planning to create additional AI research institutes in the years ahead. The total value of the awards, including contributions from partner agencies, is expected to amount to more than $300 million by next summer.

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Microsoft makes case against Apple with filing in support of Fortnite maker Epic Games

Phil Spencer, head of Xbox at Microsoft, at a 2019 Xbox E3 Briefing at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles. (Microsoft Photo)

For the second time this month, Microsoft is speaking out publicly against Apple’s actions toward third-party developers, making a statement of support for Epic’s Unreal Engine in the game technology company’s lawsuit against the iPad and iPhone maker.

Microsoft filed a statement in federal court in California over the weekend, after Epic accused Apple of threatening to revoke its access to its Apple developer accounts and tools. It’s the latest twist in a larger dispute over the Fortnite maker’s use of an in-app currency system that sidestepped Apple’s traditional payment mechanism and the accompanying 30% fee.

Phil Spencer, head of Xbox, said on Twitter over the weekend that ensuring Epic has access to the latest Apple technology is “the right thing” for gamers and the industry.

Today we filed a statement in support of Epic’s request to keep access to the Apple SDK for its Unreal Engine. Ensuring that Epic has access to the latest Apple technology is the right thing for gamer developers & gamers https://t.co/72bLdDkvUx

— Phil Spencer (@XboxP3) August 23, 2020

Microsoft’s court filing explained the company’s position in detail.

“Denying Epic access to Apple’s SDK and other development tools will prevent Epic from supporting Unreal Engine on iOS and macOS, and will place Unreal Engine and those game creators that have built, are building, and may build games on it at a substantial disadvantage,” wrote Kevin Gammill, Microsoft’s general manager for Gaming Developer Experiences, in the company’s declaration.

He continued, “If Unreal Engine cannot support games for iOS or macOS, Microsoft would be required to choose between abandoning its  customers and potential customers on the iOS and macOS platforms or choosing a different game engine when preparing to develop new games.

“Because iOS is a large and growing market for games, Apple’s discontinuation of Unreal Engine’s ability to support iOS will be a material disadvantage for the Unreal Engine in future decisions by Microsoft and other game creators as to the choice of an  engine for new games.”

Microsoft previously spoke out against Apple’s App Store policies, saying it would not be able to bring its game subscription services to Apple devices because of the associated rules and restrictions.

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GeekWire Podcast: Microsoft (maybe) rescues TikTok; downtown Seattle struggles; micro-schools

Here’s what we’re talking about on the GeekWire Podcast this week.

Who would have thought that Microsoft could be the likely white knight to save social video app TikTok from threats by President Trump to ban it in the U.S.? Trump set a hard deadline this week for Microsoft or another entity to buy the company before he’ll block all transactions with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. We discuss what might be behind Microsoft’s interest in entering the social media sphere.

We take a walk through eerily quiet downtown Seattle to see how the shift to remote work by tech giants is impacting local businesses — and it’s not looking good.

What are micro-schools and how might they help frazzled parents trying to deal with remote learning during the pandemic?

A Seattle sock-making startup pivoted to making masks for the pandemic, but then a misstep in a promotion caused massive grief. We’ll talk about what happened and how they dealt with it.

Listen above, and subscribe in any podcast app.

With GeekWire’s John Cook and Kurt Schlosser. Produced by Curt Milton. Theme music by Daniel L.K. Caldwell.

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This Seattle company is targeting the TikTok crowd — and it’s not Microsoft

LitPic is a new social app that helps creators get paid. (LitPic Images)

A new Seattle startup is launching next month targeting the influencers and creatives who make TikTok and Instagram popular.

LitPic believes it can differentiate itself in a hotly competitive space with built-in tools that allow all creators to make money on the app. The platform has four revenue streams that allow fans of creators to send them money. LitPic provides a back-end talent agency that connects influencers with relevant brands looking to partner.

LitPic CEO Maurice Yi. (LitPic Photo)

Creators can earn money in the app through direct payments from followers, premium content subscriptions, and brand deals.

“Most social media platforms think only in terms of advertising,” LitPic marketing chief Andy Karuza said in a statement. “We’re taking a different approach, one that’s designed off a self-sustaining peer-driven economy, which we call a ‘creator economy.’”

LitPic is currently in an invite-only beta and has begun recruiting influencers, including residents of The ClubHouse, a creator mansion in Beverly Hills. The app will be available on iOS and Android starting in September. LitPic has raised $450,000 from angel investors and has about 20 employees, according to CEO Maurice Yi.

LitPic creators pay $10 a month to use the service and retain 100% of the money their followers pay them using a built-in currency called Lits. It’s similar to the model used in game streaming services like Twitch, Yi said.

“Consumer and e-commerce is merging together in the future,” Yi said. “A lot of these people want to get paid … right now on TikTok and Instagram the only way to get paid is if you’re a big influencer.”

Yi brings experience working in talent booking, product design, marketing, and event production to LitPic. But even for industry giants such as Facebook, attracting followers to a new social app is a difficult business.

Lasso, the app Facebook developed to compete with TikTok, failed to gain traction and shut down less than two years after launching. This week, Facebook debuted its second attempt to compete with TikTok using Reels, a feature built into the already-popular Instagram app. Meanwhile, Thriller, another TikTok rival, is nearing unicorn status.

Competitors are emerging at a vulnerable moment for TikTok, which faces a potential ban in the U.S. if it isn’t acquired in 45 days. President Donald Trump codified his plans to ban the app in an executive order Thursday, adding pressure to acquisition talks between Microsoft and the app’s parent company, ByteDance.

“I think we’re trending towards an economic cold war and these technology platforms are at the center of it,” said Karuza, a Seattle startup vet who also serves as CEO of the automobile hardware startup FenSens. “This opens up an opportunity for U.S.-based apps.”

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Filing shows where Microsoft is really making its money; reveals M&A spending; adds Netflix, Hulu, Tencent to list of rivals

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has led a resurgence in the company’s business. (GeekWire File Photo / Kevin Lisota)

Microsoft may be toying with the idea of buying Tik-Tok, but more than ever, its bread-and-butter is basic cloud services and server software for businesses.

Speaking of M&A, Microsoft was relatively active on the acquisition front but also pretty thrifty with its spending in its recently completed fiscal year.

The company’s list of officially recognized competitors is growing, with the addition of Netflix, Hulu and Tencent for the first time.

And Microsoft now sees restrictions on marketplaces operated by competitors (i.e., Apple’s App Store) as a material risk to its business.

Those are some of our takeaways from the Redmond company’s new Form 10-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, an annual treasure trove of tidbits about the tech giant. In addition to reading the latest filing, we used the Compare Documents feature in Microsoft Word to help us spot significant changes since last year’s filing.

The biggest additions this year are long passages about COVID-19 and the company’s response to the pandemic, plus its racial justice, environmental sustainability and digital skills initiatives, largely reiterating Microsoft’s past public statements and announcements on each of those fronts.

Most notable on the business front is a section that breaks down Microsoft’s revenue into categories associated with its traditional product lines: Office, Windows, Xbox, etc. This is in contrast with the company’s quarterly financial reports. Those use a broad-based and somewhat ambiguous divisional structure — Productivity and Business Processes, Intelligent Cloud, and More Personal Computing — that mix different businesses and products in such a way that it’s not always easy to discern clear trends by product line.

The alternative categories in the 10-K filing show a clear trend: Microsoft’s back-end server products and cloud services are booming. Revenue grew by nearly 27% to $41.4 billion in the product category of Server and Cloud Services in the fiscal year ended June 30.

Office and Cloud Services revenue was the second-fastest growing category, at 11%, reaching $35.3 billion in revenue for the year. Windows grew by 9% to $22.3 billion.

Microsoft made 15 acquisitions for a total amount of $2.4 billion in its 2020 fiscal year, according to the filing. That was down from 20 acquisitions for a total of $9 billion the year before, which included the $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub.

The company’s biggest acquisition on record was its $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn in December 2016, in Microsoft’s 2017 fiscal year.

Microsoft’s official list of rivals is growing. It’s always interesting to see which competitors the company considers worthy of mentioning in the filing, as an indication of where its business is headed. Two years ago, it was Slack. This year, it’s Netflix, Hulu and Tencent.

Here’s how the section on the company’s gaming and entertainment competition now reads with those additions.

Xbox Live and our cloud gaming services face competition from various online gaming ecosystems and game streaming services, including those operated by Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Tencent. We also compete with other providers of entertainment services such as Netflix and Hulu. Our gaming platform competes with console platforms from Nintendo and Sony, both of which have a large, established base of customers. We believe our gaming platform is effectively positioned against, and uniquely differentiated from, competitive products and services based on significant innovation in hardware architecture, user interface, developer tools, online gaming and entertainment services, and continued strong exclusive content from our own first-party game franchises as well as other digital content offerings.

Interesting to see the company’s main console rivals, Nintendo and Sony, practically relegated to afterthoughts. This is notable in part as an indication that Microsoft continues to see Xbox as a broader entertainment platform, with the release of the Xbox Series X console coming up later this year.

And finally, the filing reflects the growing tension between Microsoft and competitors that operate online marketplaces in which the company wants to participate.

This section is entirely new: “Competitors’ rules governing their content and applications marketplaces may restrict our ability to distribute products and services through them in accordance with our technical and business model objectives.”

Microsoft is at odds with Apple over App Store restrictions that Microsoft says restrict its ability to offer its xCloud gaming service on iOS.

Those are our main takeaways. If you’re up for some light reading, here’s the full filing. Let us know if you spot anything notable that we missed.

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Microsoft slams Apple in new statement about xCloud and App Store policies

(Photo by Casey Rodgers/Invision for Xbox/AP Images)

Microsoft issued a statement Thursday evening calling out Apple for its App Store policies amid a controversy over the Redmond, Wash. tech giant’s new cloud gaming service.

Microsoft terminated its xCloud game streaming test on iOS on Wednesday after announcing the xCloud app will only be launching on Android devices in September.

At the time, Microsoft did not provide an explanation for why its iOS test ended early. But now the company is making its stance known. Here’s the full statement:

“Our testing period for the Project xCloud preview app for iOS has expired. Unfortunately, we do not have a path to bring our vision of cloud gaming with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to gamers on iOS via the Apple App Store. Apple stands alone as the only general purpose platform to deny consumers from cloud gaming and game subscription services like Xbox Game Pass. And it consistently treats gaming apps differently, applying more lenient rules to non-gaming apps even when they include interactive content. All games available in the Xbox Game Pass catalog are rated for content by independent industry ratings bodies such as the ESRB and regional equivalents. We are committed to finding a path to bring cloud gaming with Xbox Game Pass Ultimate to the iOS platform. We believe that the customer should be at the heart of the gaming experience and gamers tell us they want to play, connect and share anywhere, no matter where they are. We agree.” – Microsoft spokesperson

Earlier on Thursday, Apple told Business Insider that the reason for not allowing xCloud on the App Store is related to not being able to review each game.

Not having xCloud available to iOS users would be a big roadblock for Microsoft’s cloud gaming ambitions. The service, similar to Google’s Stadia offering, lets users play high-powered Xbox games such as Halo on their smartphones.

Microsoft has criticized Apple for the tight control it exercises over its App Store. Microsoft President Brad Smith told Politico in June that the time has come “for a much more focused conversation about the nature of app stores, the rules that are being put in place, the prices and tolls that are being extracted, and whether there is really a justification in antitrust law for everything that has been created.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked to testify before Congress last week on antitrust issues along with the chief executives of Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Cook was grilled on Apple’s decision to remove screen time and parental control apps from its App Store, just after the tech giant released its own competing feature as part of iOS 12.

Apple has its own gaming subscription service called Apple Arcade.

The Information reported that Microsoft’s Smith advised the House antitrust subcommittee on competition in the tech industry and took the opportunity to call out Apple’s current practices.

The House subcommittee did not ask Microsoft to testify at the hearing; the company has largely escaped the antitrust scrutiny its peers are experiencing, having faced its own investigation in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But Microsoft’s bid for the wildly popular social media app TikTok could put the company back in the hot seat.

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NBA teams and Microsoft Teams in action: How fans can get in, and get kicked out of, digital seats

NBA fans watching via Microsoft Teams Together Mode are projected on video screens during an earlier scrimmage game. (Screengrab via NBA on YouTube)

The NBA returned to action on Thursday and brought along virtual fans in an experience powered by Microsoft Teams. Some fans who missed that the tech-enabled future had arrived early thanks to coronavirus were left wondering how to get into the digital seats.

The NBA is inviting around 320 fans per game to fill the virtual stands — which are 17-foot-tall video boards that ring the court. It’s up to each team to decide how to select those fans for games played in NBA’s “bubble” in Orlando, Fla.

According to The Wall Street Journal, designated home teams get to choose most of the fans. Participants will need a device with a camera and a microphone. The Milwaukee Bucks, for instance, are inviting “super-pumped” fans who form a noisy section known as the Clutch Crew in their home arena.

The NBA is officially back! pic.twitter.com/4FYYSQB5Jm

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) July 30, 2020

Using Microsoft Teams Together Mode, fans are “seated” in each of the 10 sections surrounding the court and a moderator is assigned to each section. While it might be tough to score a free invite, the wrong conduct would make it easy to get kicked out.

The WSJ reported that moderators can hear fans and see what they’re doing and anything that crosses the line into obscene or offensive language or behavior could lead to a virtual ejection. That fan would be replaced by another fan in a virtual overflow room. Fans who leave their seat during play are also replaced by someone from this pool, and when they return they have to wait to be placed back in the crowd.

The Oklahoma City Thunder told the newspaper that fans are encouraged to cheer and chant, but waving such things as towels and balloon thundersticks is “a bit of a challenge” because the background-setting tool in Teams often distorts anything around a person’s silhouette.

The NBA shared more about all of its broadcast enhancements in a new YouTube video:

Fans tweeting during Thursday’s action seemed to be both baffled and impressed by where the sports viewing experience had come in just a few short months.

brb setting up microsoft teams so we can be in the nba crowd

— Turtle Beach (@TurtleBeach) July 29, 2020

The fact that the NBA has a crowd of ppl vía Microsoft Teams…..wow. I tell ya this pandemic has forced our society to use technologies to their full capabilities.

— G (@GMarie36) July 30, 2020

Are the fans in the virtual seats leaving early?

— Ramona Shelburne (@ramonashelburne) July 31, 2020

We were in the virtual seats for Lakers Clippers and our group was full throughout the game. One note: @Microsoft stream, played to us about :55 seconds earlier than the tv feed, was jittery throughout the night. That’s why some fans undoubtedly gave up. Need to fix @NBA

— DeepSportsKnowledge (@DeepSportsKnow1) July 31, 2020

Pretty cool to see Microsoft Teams used for “courtside” fans in tonight’s NBA games. #nba #MicrosoftTeams pic.twitter.com/FpH8LUXekG

— Dan Wahlin (@DanWahlin) July 31, 2020

Microsoft is probably counting the NBA digital fans as active Teams users pic.twitter.com/db2gmqusFj

— Andrew Sweet (@AndrewSweet) July 30, 2020

The best thing about the “live” fans in the NBA rn is that no matter how much they push Microsoft Teams, everyone’s gonna just call them Zoom calls.

Exactly like how they tried to push the Surface in the NFL and everyone called them iPads.

— Russell Vea (@rbvea) July 31, 2020

I actually really like the NBA’s Microsoft Teams fans in the stands. At least you can see real people moving and reacting. The scale is a little weird (some giant, some tiny), but it’s a start.

— Tyler Thompson (@MrsTylerKSR) July 30, 2020

The nba when they see one of the Microsoft fans fully naked on live TV pic.twitter.com/PCvXcdQvOf

— Tie ?? (@FknTie) July 30, 2020

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Microsoft will launch xCloud game streaming service Sept. 15 on Android

(Microsoft Image)

Microsoft on Tuesday revealed a launch date and other details about its new cloud-based gaming service.

Project xCloud will debut across 22 markets (including the U.S.) on Sept. 15 for Android, allowing Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription members to play more than 100 games on their phone or tablet. Microsoft did not say when xCloud will be coming to iOS devices; there could be a delay due to Apple’s App Store policies, as The Verge noted.

Bit disappointed we havent heard an update yet on xCloud for PC or iOS.

Android stuff is good, but only one piece of a much larger pie.

— Brad Sams (@bdsams) August 4, 2020

xCloud lets users play high-powered Xbox games such as Halo on their smartphones. xCloud will be coming to Windows 10 as well as the Xbox platform. The service was in public preview across North America, Europe, and South Korea earlier this year; the preview will end on Sept. 11.

Microsoft said last month that Project xCloud would be included in its Xbox Game Pass Ultimate membership program. The Ultimate package includes access to both console and PC games, in addition to an Xbox Live Gold membership, for $14.99/month. There are more than 10 million Xbox Game Pass members.

Some refer to xCloud as the “Netflix of games,” given that it lets users access a library of games via the cloud.

Microsoft said today it is partnering with Razer, PowerA, 8BitDo, and Nacon to sell new accessories built for xCloud such as phone clips and travel controllers. Gamers can also use the Xbox One Bluetooth Wireless and PlayStation DualShock 4 controllers.

Games available via xCloud include Halo 5: Guardians, Destiny 2, Grounded, Gears 5, Tell Me Why, Forza Horizon 4, and most of the titles in the Xbox Game Pass library, according to an FAQ page.

Microsoft is competing with companies including Google and Nvidia that are also investing in cloud-based gaming services.

“Cloud gaming removes the need to wait until you can access your console in order to play your favorite games: Just pick up your phone or tablet and play the games you want, any time you want,” xCloud chief Kareem Choudhry wrote in a blog post.

Microsoft is also gearing up to release its new console, the Xbox Series X, later this year.

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In latest TikTok twist, Microsoft reportedly looking at buying entire social media giant

(Bigstock Photo)

Microsoft is considering buying a bigger chunk of fast-growing social media giant TikTok.

According to a report in The Financial Times, Microsoft has discussed the possibility of buying TikTok’s business in Europe and India.

Previously, Microsoft had expressed an interest in TikTok’s business in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand and Australia. TikTok’s U.S. business claims about 100 million users and could be valued in the range of $20 billion to $50 billion.

Adding the European and Indian operations to the mix would obviously boost that price tag. TikTok, a unit of Beijing-based ByteDance, does not operate in China.

President Donald Trump imposed a Sept. 15 deadline on a TikTok acquisition, threatening to shut down the platform for short-form video montages in the U.S. if a deal is not completed. He’s also requested a payment to the U.S. government as part of the deal.

“It’s probably easier to buy the whole thing than to buy 30% of it,” Trump said Monday. “How do you buy 30%? Who’s going to get the name? The name is hot. The brand is hot … my personal opinion is you’re probably better off buying the whole thing. I think buying 30% is complicated.”

In a statement on Sunday, Microsoft said it would move quickly to negotiate with ByteDance.

“During this process, Microsoft looks forward to continuing dialogue with the United States Government, including with the President,” the company wrote.

The Financial Times, citing five people with knowledge of the deal, reported (subscription required) that Microsoft is interested in TikTok’s entire global business due to the complexity of separating back-end functions. A full acquisition would also allow users to seamlessly use the app between countries.

Microsoft can afford a bigger acquisition. Its market value stands at $1.6 trillion, and its cash, short-term investments stood at $136 billion as of June 30. The company’s largest acquisition to date was the $26.2 billion acquisition of business social media network LinkedIn in 2016.

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Reports: Microsoft in talks to buy TikTok’s U.S. operations amid growing national security concerns

(Bigstock Photo)

[Update, Friday, 8:30 p.m. Pacific: President Trump told reporters on Air Force One tonight that plans to ban TikTok, and doesn’t support a sale to Microsoft.]

Microsoft is in talks with the owner of TikTok to purchase the U.S. operations of the popular social video app, according to reports Friday afternoon by Bloomberg News and the New York Times, each citing an unnamed person familiar with the matter.

The reports come amid growing national security concerns, as President Donald Trump considers an order that would force the company’s owner, China-based ByteDance, to divest TikTok’s U.S. operations and assets, according to Bloomberg.

U.S. officials are concerned that TikTok may provide data on its users to the Chinese government, which TikTok denies. Kevin Mayer, a longtime Walt Disney executive, was named CEO of TikTok and chief operating officer of ByteDance in May.

“We’re looking at TikTok. We may be banning TikTok,” Trump told reporters today. “We may be doing some other things; there are a couple of options, but a lot of things are happening, so we’ll see what happens. But we are looking at a lot of alternatives with respect to TikTok.”

A Microsoft spokesperson declined to comment on the reports in response to GeekWire’s inquiry.

Microsoft made 15 acquisitions for a total amount of $2.4 billion in its 2020 fiscal year, according to its annual Form 10-K filing on Friday morning. That was down from 20 acquisitions for a total of $9 billion the year before, which included the $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub.

The company’s biggest acquisition on record was its $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn in December 2016, in Microsoft’s 2017 fiscal year.

As exemplified by the GitHub and LinkedIn acquisitions, Microsoft has followed the popular trend among tech giants of allowing high-profile companies to operate relatively autonomously after they’re acquired, maintaining their own organizational structures, offices, products and services.

It isn’t clear whether TikTok would follow that same pattern as part of Microsoft — if a deal were to happen. The New York Times cautions that the stage of Microsoft’s TikTok talks isn’t known.

Microsoft had $136.6 billion in cash and short-term investments as of June 30.

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Bill Gates talks TikTok: Microsoft ‘won’t do things that are hostile’ and is careful about data

Bill Gates admitted he’s not the target audience for the popular social media app TikTok, but the Microsoft co-founder, weighing in on a potential acquisition by his former company, told Bloomberg Television that he believes in the tech giant when it comes to data security.

“We’ve made investments in China, we have engineers from all over the world, including in China,” Gates told Bloomberg’s Emily Chang. “Microsoft is very careful about its data promises. We won’t do things that are hostile, or viewed as hostile.”

 Microsoft is very careful about its data promises. We won’t do things that are hostile, or viewed as hostile.

Gates said he was as confused as anyone when it comes to trying to track what happened over the weekend between President Trump, Microsoft and TikTok parent company ByteDance and whether a sale should be forced or the app should be shut down in the U.S. Asked whether he’d like to see the app in the Microsoft family, Gates simply applauded the video platform’s innovation.

“It’s nice that TikTok’s created some competition through innovation. It doesn’t seem like preventing that innovation from being available makes much sense when you want new things out there,” Gates said. “I’m certainly not an expert. I’ve gotten a lot of education from my youngest daughter about this and why she spends time on it.

“I’m focused on the [Bill & Melinda Gates] Foundation and the pandemic,” he added. “I’ll probably provide advice at some point, but I’m not at the center of the decision being made here.”

Chang did get Gates to weigh in on another hot-button topic, asking what he thought of the antitrust hearing in Congress last week and whether Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have gotten “too powerful.” Gates said legitimate issues were raised, if in a “scattershot” way.

“These companies are shaping the economy, so the idea that Congressmen get to talk to their leaders and try and understand what they’re doing in terms of media and competition, that all makes sense,” said Gates, who joked that Jeff Bezos, Tim Cook, Mark Zuckerberg and Sundar Pichai may have gotten off easy compared to what he went through during Microsoft antitrust hearings 22 years ago.

“They were lucky there were four of them on the hot seat — I was all by myself with critics sitting next to me,” Gates said. “So I guess we’re getting nicer to CEOs than in the old days.”

Microsoft’s careful Trump strategy could land it two huge prizes this summer — and draw scrutiny

What would Microsoft do with TikTok? Hit social video app goes against recent trend for tech giant

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