The $88 billion Microsoft invested in building data centers for artificial intelligence and cloud computing over the past year seems to be paying off with the company reporting profit of $101 billion for fiscal year 2025, which ended June 30. Quarterly revenue for the April through June period was $76.4 billion, up 18 percent year-over-year, with profit of $27.2 billion, a 24 percent increase. “Cloud and AI is the driving force of business transformation across every industry and sector,” said Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella, noting Azure passed $75 billion in revenue for the year, up 34 percent. Read more

Amazon’s Alexa Fund VC has made an investment in San Francisco-based startup Fable, which this week launched Showrunner, a generative AI model with an app that lets people create animated TV shows using text prompts. Showrunner has been in a closed alpha test involving about 10,000 users. Initially, Fable is making Showrunner available for free, but plans to eventually price it at $10-$20 monthly for credits enabling creation of TV-style content on Discord. The Showrunner-generated content will be shareable on social media sites including YouTube. Specific terms of Amazon’s investment have yet to be disclosed. Read more

The Walt Disney Company concluded its Upfront advertising sales with notable increases in sports and streaming commitments and an overall figure consistent with 2024’s number. Sports was a bright spot, generating close to $4 billion through both linear and addressable platforms including ESPN and others, propelled by double-digit growth in volume for “Monday Night Football” and College Football and a “high single-digit” increase in NBA volume driven largely by the NBA Finals and the half-time and post-game analysis series “Inside the NBA” that ESPN landed starting this year. Read more

New York-based Runway AI has introduced a sophisticated video model called Aleph that can perform a wide range of edits from text prompts — adding, removing and transforming objects; generating various angles on a scene; or modifying style and lighting, among other things. Aimed at streamlining post-production, Runway calls Aleph an “in-context video model,” meaning it is designed to work with existing visual material rather than generating imagery from scratch. Using Aleph puts storytellers just a prompt or two from turning that wide shot into an extreme close-up, or adding a new “next shot,” providing what Runway calls “endless coverage.” Read more

Google’s YouTube is adding new age-verification methods designed to protect teens. The streaming video platform is using AI to interpret “a variety of signals” to identify users under 18, regardless of the birthdate used to create the account. If the system identifies a user as a teen, age-appropriate protections will automatically take effect. These include disabling personalized advertising, restricted recommendations, limits on repetitive viewing of certain content and screen-time reminders. If the system incorrectly categorizes a user as under 18, they will have the option to correct the situation with a credit card or a government ID. Read more