Business

Microsoft touts US$500 million AI savings while slashing jobs

Published

16 hours ago

July 9, 2025

[NEW YORK] Microsoft is keen to show employees how much artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming its own workplace, even as the company terminates thousands of personnel.

During a presentation this week, chief commercial officer Judson Althoff said AI tools are boosting productivity in everything from sales and customer service to software engineering, according to a source familiar with his remarks.

Althoff said AI saved Microsoft more than US$500 million last year in its call centres alone and increased both employee and customer satisfaction, according to the source, who requested anonymity to discuss an internal matter.

The company is also starting to use AI to handle interactions with smaller customers, Althoff said. This effort is nascent, but already generating tens of millions of US dollars, he said.

Microsoft declined to comment.

Tech executives have been increasingly vocal about the potential for AI to automate labour currently performed by humans. Salesforce has said that 30 per cent of internal work at the company is being handled by AI, allowing it to reduce hiring for some roles. Executives at Alphabet and Meta Platforms have said significant chunks of code are now being written with AI.

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At Microsoft, AI generated 35 per cent of the code for new products, accelerating launch times, Althoff said. The company’s GitHub Copilot is a leader in the market for AI coding tools and has 15 million users, Microsoft said in April.

AI implementation has fuelled replacement anxiety for many workers, particularly in the tech industry. Microsoft has announced cuts of about 15,000 employees this year, with a wave of layoffs last week targeting customer-facing roles such as sales.

Althoff stressed to employees that AI could make them more effective as sellers. Through the use of Microsoft’s Copilot AI assistant, each salesperson is finding more leads, closing deals quicker and generating 9 per cent more revenue, he said.

Productivity gains from AI were “not a predominant factor” in the job reductions of recent months, Microsoft’s top lawyer Brad Smith said on Wednesday (Jul 9) during an event announcing a donation of over US$4 billion in cash and technology to schools with a focus on spreading AI skills. BLOOMBERG

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Business

AI/R Company Launches AI-Powered Platform to Streamline Corporate Hiring Processes

Published

53 minutes ago

July 10, 2025

The Manila Times

With AI/Quick-Match, the AI agent Llia cuts hiring costs by up to 80% and reduces time-to-hire by up to threefold

SAN FRANCISCO, July 10, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — AI Revolution Company (AI/R), a global leader in AI-driven business transformation, has announced the launch of Llia, its next-generation AI agent. Through its flagship product AI/Quick-Match, Llia delivers data-driven hiring decisions, helping companies make smarter, faster, and more cost-effective recruitment choices.

Designed as a “plug-and-play” solution, AI/Quick-Match seamlessly integrates with existing recruitment tools to accelerate hiring, reduce expenses, and ensure better candidate matches. The platform enhances HR teams by aligning talent profiles with organizational needs, automating candidate screening, conducting technical and behavioral interviews, and providing in-depth analytics-transforming the recruitment process from end to end.

“Automating interviews saves recruiters valuable time and delivers more accurate evaluations. With AI-driven insights and data-backed feedback, companies can make more confident hiring decisions. In fact, AI/Quick-Match has been shown to reduce recruitment costs by up to 80% and accelerate the hiring process by up to three times,” explains Maycon Zamunaro, CTO of Invillia, the AI/R company behind the platform. In just one month since its launch, the tool has powered over 1,000 interviews and led to approximately 100 successful hires.

Llia was created to be a natural extension of human teams-an AI agent that connects data, intelligence, and knowledge to support better decision-making and empower organizations.

Soon, three more products will be added to the Llia suite: AI/Team-Management, AI/Onboarding&Training, and AI/Performance-Review, enabling the platform to support every stage of the organizational lifecycle.

According to Alexis Rockenbach, Global CEO of AI/R Company, Llia is redefining how companies approach recruitment and talent management. “Its integrated and highly customizable products allow it to operate across all phases of the employee journey: attraction, retention, management, and development. Llia isn’t just an assistant-it’s a strategic pillar for scaling people and teams,” he states.

About AI/R

AI/R, headquartered in California, is an Agentic AI Software Engineering company that leverages its powerful ecosystem of proprietary AI platforms and hyper-specialized tech brands to drive the global enterprise revolution. Through its proprietary AI platforms and strategic partner platforms, AI/R is reshaping industries and setting new standards for business innovation and productivity. By embedding AI into every aspect of its operations, AI/R’s mission is to make the AI revolution a revolution for everyone, empowering human talent and raising the bar for digital transformation. Let’s breathe in the future.

Contact

Milena Buarque Lopes Bandeira

[email protected]

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Business

Digital Marketing in an AI World: How a Parkland Resident is Creating Growth for the Business Community – TAPinto

Published

60 minutes ago

July 10, 2025

The Editors

Digital Marketing in an AI World: How a Parkland Resident is Creating Growth for the Business Community TAPinto

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Business

Will Meta Platforms’ New Superintelligence Labs Division Send the Stock Soaring to New Heights?

Published

4 hours ago

July 10, 2025

David Jagielski, The Motley Fool

Meta Platforms has recently created a new Meta Superintelligence Labs division to focus on AI.
It’s been spending heavily on artificial intelligence, recently investing $14 billion in privately held Scale AI.
Meta has already been burning through a lot of cash via its metaverse business unit, Reality Labs.
These 10 stocks could mint the next wave of millionaires ›

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is going big on artificial intelligence (AI). It has been investing and hiring more staff to take advantage of opportunities related to AI. Recently, it unveiled its newest division: Meta Superintelligence Labs, also known as MSL.

MSL is going to be home to its AI efforts, as the company shows investors the seriousness of its focus on developing next-gen AI technologies. This comes after it recently announced a significant investment into another AI company.

Will MSL help grow the business and send Meta’s stock soaring, or prove to be just another money pit?

Image source: Getty Images.

Meta is going big on AI, and that was already evident even before it announced the launch of a new division. Previously, the company announced plans to create a stand-alone app for its chatbot, Meta AI, which has been incorporated into its existing social media platforms. It has also announced a $14 billion investment into Scale AI and in doing so it also brought on the company’s founder and CEO, Alex Wang, to help lead Meta’s AI business.

AI is undoubtedly a huge opportunity for Meta and other tech giants. But it has also been a money pit, with the payoff not always being clear to insiders or investors. Last year, research company Gartner predicted that 30% of generative AI projects would end up abandoned by the end of 2025 due to multiple factors, including rising costs and a lack of clear value for businesses.

Meta has been aggressive when it comes to pursuing growth opportunities, regardless of the costs. It began reporting on its Reality Labs division a few years ago, which focuses on the metaverse. The division routinely incurs operating losses in the billions each quarter, as that venture struggles to prove its worth. But with hugely popular apps (including WhatsApp, Instagram, and Facebook) and a ton of ad revenue, the overall company has still generated nearly $67 billion in earnings over the trailing 12 months.

However, whether MSL follows the same fate will likely be the burning question for investors that determines which direction the social media stock goes from here on out.

Although Meta will likely spend a lot of cash on this new division, I think the move makes much more sense than the metaverse, and it may even be a profitable venture.

Using headsets for the metaverse may not be all that practical if you want to stay connected for multiple hours, and glasses may be easier to wear but they can also come with other challenges — namely, privacy. With AI, however, since it can be incorporated into any part of a business, such as enhancing Meta’s ad business and improving the user experience on its social media networks. There are many more viable ways for investments into AI to pay off for Meta in the long run.

A huge advantage for the company is its billions of monthly active users, which give it a lot of data it can train an AI model on. The biggest challenge for many companies making AI models is accessing the necessary data to make them effective and useful. With Meta having a plethora of data on its social media platforms, it has a big advantage over other tech companies in this regard. It may still need to spend money to access data, but its costs may be lower in comparison to other businesses that are developing chatbots and training AI.

Meta AI already reaches 1 billion users across all of the company’s applications each month. The company looks to be in a great starting point to build out its AI business, which can hopefully lead to significant profit growth later on.

Meta has some exciting potential in AI, but without a clearer strategy of what it plans to do with AI and how much of a payoff there will be from it, I’d suggest holding off on investing in the company just yet. My preference would be to see it wind down Reality Labs and just focus on this new division. Potentially having multiple cash-burning units in its operations could hurt its cash flow and profits for the foreseeable future.

AI is an intriguing growth opportunity, but investors may want to take a wait-and-see approach with the company for now, to make sure its strategy is sound and will pay off for the business in the long haul. For now, that isn’t evident, which is why I’d wait on the sidelines for the time being.

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Randi Zuckerberg, a former director of market development and spokeswoman for Facebook and sister to Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg, is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. David Jagielski has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool recommends Gartner. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Will Meta Platforms’ New Superintelligence Labs Division Send the Stock Soaring to New Heights? was originally published by The Motley Fool

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