Microsoft

Microsoft has officially rolled out its AI upscaling technology Auto SR to the Asus ROG Xbox Ally X handheld and select AMD Ryzen Copilot+ PCs, enabling handheld battery-powered use and 1080p game support for the first time. A new Performance Mode raises the frame-rate cap from roughly 60-75 FPS to 120 FPS and can now run alongside Auto HDR. The rollout is staged and requires updated Xbox Game Bar, Windows 11, and the Auto Super Resolution Package from the Microsoft Store.

Microsoft released .NET 11 at .NET Conf 2026 as a Standard Term Support version with two years of support. The release adds hundreds of runtime and base-library performance optimizations and deepens AI tooling: the SDK ships MCP server templates, companion AI libraries and an agent framework cover model access, tool calling and workflow orchestration, and Blazor gains experimental AI UI components. C# 15 introduces union types, and .NET MAUI now defaults to the CoreCLR runtime.

Microsoft's October Patch Tuesday addressed 1,415 vulnerabilities, 85 of them rated critical, including one actively exploited Windows Shell flaw that bypasses the Mark of the Web defense. Security practitioners warn the sheer volume risks burying high-severity issues and urge prioritizing CVEs scoring above 9.0.

Anthropic's bankers plan to raise the IPO price range after heavy investor demand, lifting the target valuation back above $1.5 trillion. The Tuesday filing set a $70-$78 share range implying $1.26T-$1.41T including options and restricted shares; pricing above that range would push proceeds past $100B, with Google, Nvidia and Microsoft investing $26B at the IPO price. Three backers say Anthropic now prioritizes raising cash over maximizing valuation, given roughly $900B of planned compute and infrastructure spending.

Microsoft and other tech firms are lobbying the US government to abandon planned restrictions on Chinese optical transceivers, warning of component shortages that could slow AI data center buildouts. Chinese suppliers hold roughly two-thirds of the global market, while US capacity is seen as insufficient for rapid substitution. The FCC is weighing limits on 3.2Tbps modules, with no final rule yet.

Anthropic unveiled native workplace software including Claude Sheets and Claude Data, letting users generate collaborative spreadsheets and self-updating dashboards from plain-language prompts, with Adobe, Atlassian and Box embedded directly in chat. The move shifts Claude from an add-in to a standalone productivity platform competing with Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, and Microsoft shares fell more than 3.5% after the announcement.

Microsoft has released .NET 11, spanning C# 15, ASP.NET Core, .NET MAUI and Windows development, with hundreds of runtime optimizations and faster SDK tooling. The release emphasizes AI-powered development and agentic capabilities, letting developers build web, cross-platform and AI applications with less overhead.

Kirt McMaster, co-founder of the defunct Cyanogen, has launched Kora Systems, a Linux-based desktop OS that bakes AI models and autonomous agents directly into the computing experience, letting them work across apps, access files, and retain context between tasks. The free OS is slated for 2027 with support for Intel, AMD, and Qualcomm Snapdragon PCs, built by a roughly 50-person team using AI coding tools like Codex and Claude.

Anthropic updated its IPO filing to offer 825 million shares at $70-78 each, raising up to $64.35 billion and implying a fully diluted valuation of up to $1.405 trillion, well above its $965 billion mark in May. Seven giants including AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google and TSMC will concurrently purchase $26 billion of Class N shares at the IPO price. Revenue hit $33.24 billion in the first nine months, up roughly 1200% year over year, while net loss reached $104 billion amid growing investor caution on AI valuations.

Microsoft released .NET 11 runtime RC 2, whose main change is raising minimum hardware instruction set requirements on x86/x64 and Arm64 and updating ReadyToRun compilation targets to exploit newer hardware. Windows on Arm64 now requires the LSE instruction set, while Linux and Apple minimums are unchanged. The runtime also improves a consistent event model for async state machines and profiler logging support.