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Microsoft acquires Simplygon to accelerate innovation in enabling 3D for everyone

- Kudo Tsunoda - Corporate Vice President, Next Gen Experiences, Windows and Devices Group

I am pleased to announce that Microsoft has acquired Simplygon, a premier developer of automatic 3D data-optimization solutions. This acquisition accelerates our 3D For Everyone vision and strategy, which we introduced with the Windows 10 Creators Update at our event this past October in New York. Simplygon’s technology and talent will strengthen our position in 3D creation, making it easier to capture, create and share in 3D. It builds on … Read more »

Microsoft transforms the retail experience at NRF’s Big Show

- Tracy Issel - General Manager, Worldwide Retail
Photo of crowd gathered around Microsoft booth at NRF Big Show

This week at the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) annual Big Show in New York City, Microsoft is unveiling the latest digital innovations that are transforming the shopping experience for customers – at every step of their journey, across every channel. While personalization, omnichannel and customer-centricity are not new themes, retailers are more aware than ever that competing in today’s world requires emphasis on the entire customer journey. Technology and culture … Read more »

Microsoft acquires deep learning startup Maluuba; AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio to have advisory role

- Harry Shum - Executive Vice President, Microsoft Artificial Intelligence and Research Group

Today is an exciting day for the advancement of AI at Microsoft. We have agreed to acquire Maluuba, a Montreal-based company with one of the world’s most impressive deep learning research labs for natural language understanding. Maluuba’s expertise in deep learning and reinforcement learning for question-answering and decision-making systems will help us advance our strategy to democratize AI and to make it accessible and valuable to everyone — consumers, businesses … Read more »

New ways to farm, photograph and inject even more personality into live music performances – Weekend Reading Jan. 13

- Suzanne Choney - Microsoft News Center Staff
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Joshua Lawrence went from being a structural steel draftsman to his dream job of being a commercial photographer. Ros Harvey wants to help farmers “feed the world without wrecking the planet,” and she’s on her way to doing just that with an “internet of oysters.” A Seattle radio station that helps listeners discover new music through videos of live acts that perform at its on-site studio now can integrate artists’ … Read more »

New Windows 10 devices at CES, Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform, summiting the highest peaks in 50 states (in under 50 days) – Weekend Reading: Jan. 6 edition

- Thomas Kohnstamm
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Happy New Year, and welcome to the first Weekend Reading of 2017. We know many of you are still climbing your mountain of post-vacation emails or getting re-acquainted with commuting schedules, but please allow us to distract you with our top news from an exciting first week back in the office. At the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Microsoft partners put their innovation on full display. Acer, Dell, … Read more »

Microsoft Connected Vehicle Platform helps automakers transform cars

- Peggy Johnson - Executive Vice President, Business Development
Graphic image shows the outline of a futuristic car racing away from a city skyline

Renault-Nissan is first auto manufacturer to commit to platform to build connected cars Traditional automakers, many of whom ushered in an era of incredible disruption nearly a century ago, now face disruption themselves from four modern forces — connected, autonomous, shared and electric cars. The infrastructure and scale required to build a connected car is incredibly complicated, expensive and resource intensive. At its core, it’s a software challenge, and a … Read more »

Artificial intelligence takes on machine reading, Christmas carols and eye disease – Weekend Reading: Dec. 30 edition

- Susanna Ray
Rangan Majumder, partner group program manager with Microsoft’s Bing search engine division.

Artificial intelligence (AI) made incredible strides in 2016, and the growth appears set to accelerate as we enter the New Year. A team of Microsoft researchers has released a dataset of 100,000 questions and answers that other AI researchers can use – for free – in their quest to create systems that can read and answer questions as well as a human. The MS MARCO dataset is based on anonymized … Read more »

As location data grows, Microsoft partners with mapping companies to build next world graph

- Kevin Dallas - Microsoft Corporate Vice President of Business Development
Company leaders speak from the stage

Location is essential in understanding the world around us, and making sense of complex location data has enormous potential to transform lives, cities and industries. The journey starts with an ecosystem that leverages the heritage and first-class expertise and technologies of our partners. As a step in this direction, TomTom, HERE and Esri — all titans in mapping technology — joined us Wednesday at the Microsoft Technology Center in Detroit … Read more »

Microsoft and AI: Introducing social chatbot Zo, Cortana takes on new roles and more

- Microsoft Corporate Blogs
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On Tuesday, Microsoft introduced Zo, the next evolution in chatbots; shared how Cortana, in partnership with Harman Kardon, will be present in a new way in your home; and announced that more than 67,000 developers are now using Microsoft’s Bot Framework and Cognitive Services. “We’re really moving from a world where we have to understand computers to a world where they will understand us and our intent, from machine-centric to … Read more »

Microsoft Ventures: Making the long bet on AI + people

- Nagraj Kashyap - Corporate Vice President, Microsoft Ventures

Today, I’m excited to share another significant commitment by Microsoft to democratize AI: a new Microsoft Ventures fund for investment in AI companies focused on inclusive growth and positive impact on society. I also have an update about the growth of our overall portfolio of companies. AI holds great promise to augment human capabilities and improve society by tackling some of the world’s biggest problems. Our recently announced partnership with … Read more »