Tom Warren

Microsoft’s hacking event, Zero Day Quest, is back and accepting nominations today until October 4th. This year there is up to $5 million in bounty awards, up $1 million on last year’s figure. Microsoft is even offering multiplied bounty awards for the most critical issues in products like Azure, Copilot, and Microsoft 365. Security researchers will also get a chance to qualify for a live hacking event at Microsoft’s headquarters in spring 2026.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman teased GPT-5 yesterday in a post on X, and now OpenAI’s head of applied research says he’s “excited to see how the public receives GPT-5.” I reported in my Notepad newsletter that OpenAI was preparing to launch GPT-5 in early August. Microsoft has already quietly launched a mysterious new Copilot smart mode, which is likely in preparation for a GPT-5 release. OpenAI loves to launch new things on a Thursday.

Earlier this year there were a lot of questions over the $100 billion investment into The Stargate Project, and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella was quick to defend the software giant’s investment in cloud and AI data center projects. Microsoft posted its Q4 2025 fiscal earnings yesterday, revealing that Azure surpassed $75 billion in revenue over the year. Microsoft is also spending $30 billion on its AI infrastructure investments next quarter, which totals $120 billion over a year if it keeps that spending up.