News JVTech Microsoft is cutting costs and halting this project in favor of artificial intelligence
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It’s no longer a surprise, Microsoft is going through a difficult time along with a host of other tech giants. Therefore, the multinational corporation strives to find solutions to limit its expenses. The latter also decided to cancel an innovative project for the future.
Microsoft is definitely putting an end to this ambitious project
To save money from its business, tech giant Microsoft has decided to end one of its ambitious initiatives.
Notably, the multinational has halted its Industrial Metaverse Core Pole, which aims to encourage adoption of the Metaverse in industrial environments. The goal of this project was to propose and develop metaverses to allow professionals to work more efficiently on their production chain.
Specifically, the industrial metaverse relies on augmented reality embedded in HoloLens headsets, Microsoft’s VR/AR headsets. This type of functionality allows employees to be guided virtually without having to physically leave a product’s assembly line. According to the information, Microsoft would have laid off a hundred employees of the team working on this project.
However, Microsoft would like to point out that the end of this initiative will not cause any harm to the customers of the tech behemoth:
“Microsoft remains committed to the industrial metaverse. We’re focusing on the areas of the industry metaverse that matter most to our customers, and they won’t see any change in the way they’re supported. We look forward to sharing more information in the future. »
And for good reason, the company had many well-known customers:
A collateral victim of Microsoft’s strategy
This initiative is part of a larger trend. In fact, due to the palpable economic uncertainty, Microsoft has announced that it will lay off 10,000 employees by the end of March. Through this strategy, the company plans to save $1.2 billion in the second quarter.
“These are the difficult choices we’ve made in our forty-seven years of existence to remain a vital company in an industry that doesn’t forgive those who don’t adapt to platform changes,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said last January .
With interest in the Metaverse plummeting in recent months — evidenced by Meta’s $14 billion loss in 2022 — Microsoft seems to have been the quick choice. Recently, the giant also announced the closure of AltspaceVR, an interactive 3D virtual world that looks like a metaverse.
In addition, Microsoft seems to be working hard to achieve a place among the largest in the field of artificial intelligence. After investing $10 billion in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, Microsoft has big plans including adding GPT to the Bing search engine and integrating it with Office.
