The tech giant declared a quarterly dividend of $0.83 per share, reflecting an 8 cent, or 10%, increase over the previous quarter. In July, the company said it will spend more this fiscal year on AI infrastructure. It reported a 77.6% rise in capital spending in the quarter ended June 30, largely due to AI-related expenses.

Microsoft will raise its quarterly payout by about 11% and begin a new stock-buyback program.

EU-UK trade deal continues to hurt trade with 27% drop in exports since 2021 reports Aston University. The UK government must seek “beneficial alignment” with the EU to overcome the hurdles hurting trade,

Some of the updates include an AI-assisted collaborative canvas which allows multiple users to interact, edit and make changes at the same time. In a blog post, Jared Spataro, corporate vice president of AI at work at Microsoft, called it "an entirely new work pattern -- multiplayer, human-to-AI-to-human collaboration."

Copilot is the new UI for AI,” said Microsoft corporate vice president of AI at Work Jared Spataro at the reveal of Microsoft 365 Copilot Phase 2.

Key Takeaways U.S. equities were higher at midday as August retail sales were higher than anticipated and the Fed began a two-day meeting expected to produce interest-rate cuts. ,Intel said it was spinning off its contract chipmaking business and signed an agreement to make semiconductors for Amazon's Amazon Web Services.