Microsoft CFO tells employees to ‘focus’ as DeepSeek release raises questions on AI spending: Report

Microsoft chief financial officer (CFO) told employees in an internal memo to keep their heads down and focus. This comes as Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) startup DeepSeek's new model got launched, competing with the Microsoft-backed OpenAI at a fraction of the cost.

This ended up raising questions from investors about the possibility of returns from AI due to the huge spending by other tech giants on it. A particular case is the joint venture by OpenAI, Oracle, and SoftBank called Stargate which would spend $500 billion on AI infrastructure. Even Microsoft plans to invest $80 billion into this in 2025 alone.