Microsoft

The corporations on our annual list of the world's 500 largest companies combined to generate $41.7 trillion in revenue over the past year.

Fortune Global 500

Almost $20 trillion in revenue—and a record-breaking $1.87 trillion in profits. Introducing the 2025 Fortune 500, the definitive list of the biggest companies in America.

Fortune 500

The 300 companies on this year’s list brought in over $12.6 trillion in revenue for the latest 12 months, with the median revenue figure at $22 billion.

America's Most Innovative Companies

Leaders in all industries rely more than ever on Big Tech—and appreciate the giants that deliver, at scale, without drama.

World's Most Admired Companies

These 50 companies exemplify the innovation, progress, and potential of AI.

AI Innovators 2025-Microsoft

Fortune 50 AI Innovators

The corporations on our annual list posted aggregate revenues of $41 trillion for the second year in a row.

Industries included in the sector are computers, internet services, IT services, semiconductors, and software companies.

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The Fortune 500, in its 70th year in 2024, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

The 200 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

The 26th edition of the list shows how much esteem Big Tech giants command among other business leaders.

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The 25th Fortune World’s Most Admired Companies list suggests that tech giants’ peers respect them as much as ever.

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The corporations on our annual list of the world’s largest companies delivered a record $41 trillion in aggregate revenues.

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The software, cloud services, and gaming giant has become a trailblazer in artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, its productivity apps and services and other products continue to generate huge profits; Microsoft earned $72.7 billion in 2022, second only to Apple among U.S. Fortune 500 companies. 
<ul> 
 	<li>In January 2023, Microsoft announced that it was making a new $10 billion investment in its longtime partner OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Early products emerging from that partnership include an A.I. assistant to Microsoft 365 apps and services, known as Copilot, and its Bing GPT-4 chatbot.</li> 
 	<li>Even as it announced A.I. advances, Microsoft drew criticism for laying off a team that worked on ensuring ethical outcomes for the technology. Microsoft let the team go as part of a 10,000-employee culling in March 2023. Microsoft said at the time that it was just one of the company’s ethics teams, and that its product teams all had staffers now who “are accountable for ensuring we put our A.I. principles into practice.”</li> 
 	<li>In April 2023, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority blocked Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of video-game maker Activision Blizzard, a deal first announced in January 2022. Microsoft has appealed the ruling. The company took a step closer to the merger in July 2023 when a U.S. court ruled against the Federal Trade Commission's efforts to block the deal.</li> 
</ul>

The essential guide to a sector that’s now attracting one out of every four startup investment dollars.

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While OpenAI deserves the credit for having created ChatGPT, it wouldn't have happened without billions of dollars in investment from Microsoft. The tech giant has committed a reported $13 billion to OpenAI so far and it has built one of the world's largest supercomputing clusters to help OpenAI train its ever-larger, more capable AI models. Microsoft’s Bing Chat, a chatbot and search engine, was built with models from OpenAI, and since its debut, users engaged in over a billion chats with the bot and generated more than a billion images with Bing Image Creator, which uses AI to turn user prompts into images. What Bing hasn't done, however, is move the needle on Microsoft's searh business: Bing remains stuck at about 3% of the global search market, compared to Google's 91%. But for Microsoft, the more important wins from generative AI have been in its Cloud business. Here, Microsoft's ability to offer OpenAI's technology to its Azure cloud customers has helped the tech giant turns in sales and profit growth that has beaten Wall Street expectations, with generative AI accounting for about 3% of the growth in Cloud revenues in the quarter ended in September. Microsoft has also been implementing AI across its core business producitivity software products, from PowerPoint to Outlook, as well as adding products like GitHub Copilot, an AI-powered coding assistant.

The 300 companies on this list are transforming industries from the inside out.

Fortune collaborated with the Diligent Institute to rank the most innovative boards of directors among S&P 500.

Modern Board 2023-Microsoft

After reaching the top spot on last year’s Modern Board 25 ranking, Microsoft has taken a steep tumble but still makes an appearance given its commitment to ESG and board expertise. Its movement on the former includes a push to be carbon negative by 2030, remove historical emissions, and build a “planetary computer” to measure, monitor, and model environmental data. The 12-member board, almost all of whom are independent, includes CEO Satya Nadella, who has been with Microsoft since the early ’90s and previously served as executive vice president of Microsoft’s cloud and enterprise group. Other CEO directors include Wells Fargo’s Charles Scharf, Padmasree Warrior of social reading platform Fable Group, and Emma Walmsley of biopharmaceutical company GSK. In April, The U.K.’s antitrust watchdog vetoed Microsoft’s $69 billion bid to acquire gaming company Activision Blizzard. The company plans to appeal, but a remedy will take time.

Fortune Modern Board 25

The companies on this list are mobilizing the creative tools of capitalism to help solve social problems.

CTW 2023-Microsoft

Only 11% of Indians speak English, the language of the country’s government, while only 57% speak Hindi. That leaves hundreds of millions who speak neither of those languages without good access to information about government services. Microsoft is deploying AI to help: In May, it partnered with local research lab AI4Bharat to create Jugalbandi, a chatbot that combines text-to-speech, translation, and generative AI to give rural Indians access to public services, like university scholarship applications or financial assistance programs, in their own language. The service, which people communicate with through WhatsApp, uses GPT models housed on Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI Service to process questions and uncover information. Jugalbandi is just one way Microsoft hopes to use AI to tackle India’s social issues—and what works in India, with all its complexity, could work globally as well.

Change the World

The Fortune 500, in its 69th year in 2023, ranks the biggest U.S. companies by revenue.

F500 2023-Microsoft

The software, cloud services, and gaming giant has become a trailblazer in artificial intelligence. Meanwhile, its productivity apps and services and other products continue to generate huge profits; Microsoft earned $72.7 billion in 2022, second only to Apple on the Fortune 500. 
<ul> 
 	<li>In January 2023, Microsoft announced that it was making a new $10 billion investment in its longtime partner OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT. Early products emerging from that partnership include an A.I. assistant to Microsoft 365 apps and services, known as Copilot, and its Bing GPT-4 chatbot.</li> 
 	<li>Even as it announced A.I. advances, Microsoft drew criticism for laying off a team that worked on ensuring ethical outcomes for the technology. Microsoft let the team go as part of a 10,000-employee culling in March 2023. Microsoft said at the time that it was just one of the company’s ethics teams, and that its product teams all had staffers now who “are accountable for ensuring we put our A.I. principles into practice.”</li> 
 	<li>In April 2023, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority blocked Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of video-game maker Activision Blizzard, a deal first announced in January 2022. Microsoft has appealed the ruling.</li> 
</ul>

Just as it dominates our economy, Big Tech now dominates Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation.

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Aggregate sales hit $37.8 trillion last year—an increase of 19%, the highest annual growth rate in the list’s history.

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Microsoft posted a robust 38% increase in profits last year—earning $61 billion as revenue rose 17.5% to $168 billion. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. The company’s hardware teams coped with a global chip crisis that led to a shortage of Xbox game consoles, but reveled in successes with the release of new Surface laptops and tablet devices. Its software divisions took some lumps, including a disappointing release of Windows 11 (fewer than 1% of 10 million PCs surveyed by IT firm Lansweeper upgraded to the new system) and an early 2021 cybersecurity attack involving Microsoft’s Exchange email software that affected tens of thousands of customers. On the geopolitical front, Microsoft pulled its LinkedIn social platform from China in October 2021 after facing increased content restrictions from the government. In March 2021, the company unveiled its virtual reality platform Microsoft Mesh; it later won a $22 billion contract to supply U.S. Army combat troops with augmented reality headsets. Microsoft took its place in the stock market record books in June 2021, when it became only the second company in U.S. history, after Apple, to reach a $2 trillion market valuation.

Modern Boards 2022 Microsoft

Microsoft has been one of the top-performing companies in tech (or in any sector) for several years running. It also earns the top spot on our inaugural Modern Board 25, thanks to high marks in gender equality, board independence, board expertise, and ESG. <a href="https://news.microsoft.com/leadership/?section=board-members">Eight of its 12 board members</a> and three out of four committee chairs represent gender or ethnic diversity, which studies have shown correlates with stronger company performance and a greater ability to handle emerging business challenges.  
 
Microsoft’s lead independent director is John W. Thompson, former CEO of Virtual Instruments and Symantec, and one of the most prominent Black executives in tech. After joining the board in 2012, Thompson succeeded Microsoft founder Bill Gates as chairman in 2014 and held that role until 2021. Gates left Microsoft’s board in March 2020.  
 
Reid Hoffman, angel investor and cofounder of LinkedIn, joined the board in 2017 after Microsoft bought his company for $26 billion in 2016. Microsoft’s board also boasts former U.S. secretary of commerce Penny Pritzker, and the former worldwide chairman for Johnson &amp; Johnson, Sandra Peterson. The current CEOs of GlaxoSmithKline, ADP, and Wells Fargo are also directors. Padmasree Warrior, former CTO of Cisco, and two CFOs round out the group, along with CEO Satya Nadella, who was named chairman in 2021. 
 
Some governance experts consider having the CEO serve as board chairman to be suboptimal, but as Thompson explained in a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/07/microsoft-lead-director-ceo-satya-nadella-earned-right-to-be-chair.html">recent interview</a>, Nadella has earned the role of chairman because of the company’s exceptional performance under his watch; since Nadella became CEO in 2014, the company has seen major growth in cloud services and video gaming while remaining dominant in productivity software. Microsoft is one of only a handful of U.S. companies to have exceeded a $1 trillion market capitalization; after briefly dipping below $150 at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in North America, its share price has been over $300 for most of 2022.   
 
Microsoft made headlines in early 2022 with its proposed acquisition of Activision Blizzard, a gaming company embroiled in numerous scandals involving its allegedly toxic work environment. Microsoft’s board and C-suite leaders will face a major challenge as they seek to reshape the acquired company’s culture.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 68th running of the list.

F500 2022 Microsoft

Microsoft posted a robust 38% increase in profits last year—earning $61 billion, the fourth-largest sum among Fortune 500 companies—as revenue rose 17.5% to $168 billion. But it wasn’t all smooth sailing. The company’s hardware teams coped with a global chip crisis that led to a shortage of Xbox game consoles, but reveled in successes with the release of new Surface laptops and tablet devices. Its software divisions took some lumps, including a disappointing release of Windows 11 (fewer than 1% of 10 million PCs surveyed by IT firm Lansweeper upgraded to the new system) and an early 2021 cybersecurity attack involving Microsoft’s Exchange email software that affected tens of thousands of customers. On the geopolitical front, Microsoft pulled its LinkedIn social platform from China in October 2021 after facing increased content restrictions from the government. In March 2021, the company unveiled its virtual reality platform Microsoft Mesh; it later won a $22 billion contract to supply U.S. Army combat troops with augmented reality headsets. Microsoft took its place in the stock-market record books in June 2021, when it became only the second company in U.S. history, after Apple, to reach a $2 trillion market valuation.

After a year in which humanity leaned more heavily than ever on tech giants, see which companies topped Fortune's ranking of corporate reputation.

WMAC-2021-03-Microsoft

Total revenue for the world’s biggest companies fell 4.8% to $31.7 trillion this year—the first decline in half a decade.

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While many Big Tech companies faced withering criticism last year for their behavior, Microsoft largely escaped scrutiny. That may be because CEO Satya Nadella has built a collection of complementary parts that perform exceptionally without being the dominant player in any new market. Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, part of the cloud business that increased revenue 34% in the calendar fourth quarter of 2020, trails Amazon. And even as it lags Sony in gaming, Microsoft’s gaming unit saw revenue jump 51% in the holiday quarter with the release of the new Xbox Series X and S. Microsoft still leads its category with the old Windows PC software business, but its PC hardware sales rank outside the top five, and in mobile phones Microsoft is just another app developer. All of this meant that Microsoft was left out of the U.S. House antitrust subcommittee's 450-page report that targeted Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Google. Sure, there was a complaint in Europe by Slack, alleging that Microsoft had unfairly helped its Teams app. But no one’s seeking to break up the tech giant or undo its acquisitions—at least not for the moment.

This year’s Fortune 500 marks the 67th running of the list.

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For an astounding 13th straight year, Apple claims the top spot in Fortune’s annual ranking of corporate reputation, based on a survey of almost 3,800 executives, directors, and analysts.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $33.3 trillion in revenues and $2.1 trillion in profits.

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Microsoft jumps 13 spots on this year's Global 500. In the company's fiscal 2019, overall sales soared 14% year-over-year, to $125.8 billion, and the Redmond, Wash., giant churned out $39 billion in profits to boot. Last fall, Microsoft won a coveted cloud-computing contract with the Pentagon worth up to $10 billion, a deal that would help solidify the company's reputation as a leading cloud vendor. (That deal is on hold and under review, however, after rival bidder Amazon raised questions about the bidding process.) So far in 2020, a surge in remote working, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, has led to even greater demand for the company’s Azure cloud service and its Office 365 workplace apps.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 66th running of the list.

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Microsoft reached its highest ranking ever on the Fortune 500, up five spots from last year, and churned out $39 billion in profits to boot. In Microsoft’s fiscal 2019, overall sales soared 14% year-over-year, to $125.8 billion. Last fall, the software titan won a coveted cloud-computing contract with the Pentagon worth up to $10 billion, a deal that would help solidify Microsoft’s reputation as a leading cloud vendor. (That deal is on hold and under review, however, after rival bidder Amazon raised questions about the bidding process.) So far in 2020, a surge in remote working as a result of the coronavirus pandemic has led to even greater demand for the company’s Azure cloud service and its Office 365 workplace apps. Microsoft’s shares hit an all-time high in February at nearly $189, underscoring Wall Street’s enthusiasm for the company's evolution under CEO Satya Nadella.

As we face unprecedented collective challenges, cooperation has become a business superpower.

16.CTW20.Microsoft

Microsoft started off 2020 with a startling announcement: By 2030, the software titan aims to be not just carbon neutral, but carbon negative. By 2050, Microsoft says, it will have negated all of its carbon emissions since its 1975 founding. (Pictured here: Microsoft president Brad Smith, chief financial officer Amy Hood and CEO Satya Nadella on the day of the announcement, Jan. 15, 2020.) 
 
The company is tackling nearer-term crises too. When the world’s focus shifted to the coronavirus, Microsoft responded by offering 25 million people free online training in digital skills such as data analytics, IT, and cybersecurity. It represented a vital lifeline to those whose jobs may never come back—and in particular for women and minorities, who have been hit hardest financially by the pandemic. 
 
That short-term offering is part of a much broader Microsoft upskilling effort. In Africa, for instance, Microsoft’s 4Afrika initiative has established training programs to address the continent’s digital skills gap. It’s a good deed, but it isn’t charity: Microsoft sees Africa as a growth market, and 4Afrika is busy signing up customers and spotting new business ideas.

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This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.7 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 65th running of the list.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 64th running of the list.

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This year's Fortune 500 marks the 63rd running of the list.

Here’s our look at 50 companies that do well by doing good.

Here are the World's Most Admired Companies for 2016 as ranked in their industries. See who made the list.

This year's Fortune Global 500 generated $27.6 trillion in revenues and $1.5 trillion in profits.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 62nd running of the list.

Business insiders have spoken: Asked which companies they most admire, more than 4,100 executives, directors, and analysts chose these top 50 All-Stars.

The world's 500 largest companies generated $31.2 trillion in revenues and $1.7 trillion in profits in 2014. Together, this year's Fortune Global 500 employ 65 million people worldwide and are represented by 36 countries.

This year's Fortune 500 marks the 61st running of the list. Wal-Mart claims the top spot again. See who made the list.

Google tops the list once again, marking its eighth appearance and fifth time as No. 1.

Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For

Global business is back. After limping through a worldwide financial crisis and economic slowdown, the 500 largest companies ranked by revenues shattered all sorts of performance records in 2013: They racked up combined revenues of $31.1 trillion, up 2.5% from 2012, and profits soared 27% to nearly $2 trillion. China’s 95 companies (up from 89 last year) posted $5.8 trillion in revenues. The U.S. has four fewer companies on the list than last year but remains (for now) the country leader, with 128 corporations on the list—including No. 1 Wal-Mart Stores—reporting $8.6 trillion in revenues. 

Wal-Mart stayed on top as its sales crept closer to half-a-trillion dollars. Apple moved into the top five. And UnitedHealth Group continued its steady climb. 

Change The World

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Routinely ranked as one of the world’s most valuable companies by market capitalization, the software giant makes the popular Windows PC operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of business productivity software. It also runs the Microsoft Azure cloud computing service, and owns the Xbox gaming platform, the code repository GitHub, and the professional social network LinkedIn. Cofounded by Bill Gates in 1975, Microsoft operates data centers around the globe to support its cloud computing services. In recent years, Microsoft has been at the forefront of the generative AI revolution through its partnership with OpenAI, its Copilot-branded AI applications, and its own AI models produced in-house.

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Microsoft (MSFT): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings

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microsoft

Routinely ranked as one of the world’s most valuable companies by market capitalization, the software giant makes the popular Windows PC operating system and the Microsoft 365 suite of business productivity software. It also runs the Microsoft Azure cloud computing service, and owns the Xbox gaming platform, the code repository GitHub, and the professional social network LinkedIn. Cofounded by Bill Gates in 1975, Microsoft operates data centers around the globe to support its cloud computing services. In recent years, Microsoft has been at the forefront of the generative AI revolution through its partnership with OpenAI, its Copilot-branded AI applications, and its own AI models produced in-house.

Microsoft (MSFT): Company Profile, Stock Price, News, Rankings | Fortune

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Microsoft researchers have revealed the 40 jobs most exposed to AI—and even teachers make the list

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Bill Gates gave so much money away that $51 billion just got swiped from his net worth—now his former No. 2 and Microsoft successor Steve Ballmer is wealthier than he is

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Microsoft’s chief privacy officer—and a former commissioner for the U.S.  government agency responsible for protecting online privacy—discusses AI  regulation, how digital safety and tech uniquely impact the lives of women and  children, and the role her company is playing in the global adoption of responsible AI. 

Training AI to Play By The Rules

Conferences

Hello everybody. OK, so Julie, what are the whole uh range of other things that you do? Lots and lots of things. So privacy, responsible AI, digital safety data governance, it's sort of the whole suite of sounds super, super easy. It's really easy, yeah, yeah, great. OK, so, um, let's let's get into it, uh, lots of very hefty topics, um, I know you recently you're, you're always attending policy, privacy, um. Conferences, but there was one in Venice you were at recently in DC um what what's top of mind at these events right now? So what's fascinating in terms of what's going on right now is there seems to be a consensus that is developing among global regulators, not just in Europe, not just in the United States, but in Asia and elsewhere, which is regulation is deeply important and it's the same. Time regulators need to make sure that there will be innovation. So there's a lot of discussion right now about how do we ensure that we are enabling innovation while protecting fundamental rights and also how do we make sure that startups and small and medium enterprises can navigate the regulatory space? We've heard a lot earlier in Conference about how difficult it can be for those kinds of entities. So regulators are looking at simplification. They're looking at harmonizing across all of these different domains, and they're really looking to drive and enable innovation, and that's actually quite refreshing seeing that now. You've been on both sides, right? Also, you've spent some time on the government side, yes, which do you like better? No, I'm just joking. I um yes, yes, yeah, sure, that's a good answer. um OK, let's uh talk about safety. You spend a lot of time thinking again from from both perspectives from your previous, um, you know, previous career as well, um, as your current one about safety when it comes to AI and and technology more broadly, uh, when it comes to kids, yeah. Do you, what do you think about most? What's most critical, and I'm curious to hear also from the point of view of the corporate side of of your role today. What is companies, uh, you know, role versus the government. Sure, so governments around the world are really focused on kids right now in a way that we haven't actually seen in quite some time. Um, so and the focus is really around social media and the impact on kids, and you're seeing globally outside of the United States the adoption of laws that companies really do need to pay attention to and are paying attention to. And the reason why I say outside of the United States is there's this little thing, the First Amendment, that sort of has. Tied up some of the laws that are that the governments are trying to adopt that said, from a company perspective, what we need to make sure is that we provide parents, moms, dads with the tools so that they can help their kids navigate this space and also can protect their kids from whatever content they're able to control. It's a challenging space because at the same time you want to enable kids to learn about a digital technology. You want them to engage because this is their future digital technology. So there's a balance that needs to be struck, and I think that a lot of jurisdictions are doing that and a lot of governments, so a lot of governments are doing. that and companies are really trying to enable that kind of balance. So if you go back a ways I know you brought up social media and some of the risks and concerns there but um we saw regulators um trying to to catch up when it came to social media, when it came to mobile to those technological transformations. Do you feel like with the advent of AI, um, there's a little bit more of a preemptive thought being given to some of the potential issues? There was absolutely and I'd say, you know, particularly around the EU AI Act and some other very immersive comprehensive laws dealing with AI, the governments were saying, look, we missed the boat on social media, so we need to get out in front. We need to regulate. And I think there's now a recognition that there's a need to take an examination, really take a step back. This is by governments that are saying let's make sure that these laws can be implemented by companies across the spectrum. We want to enable startups. We want to enable innovation, and so I think that that is what is starting this initiative that you're seeing around what I talked about before. Simplification, harmonization, so it isn't so complicated going from privacy to responsible AI to digital safety. Let's bring them together in a way that will work a little bit better for the small and medium enterprises, but it did begin, I think you're right, when governments thought, gee, I think we missed the boat on social media. Do, do you feel like the um this kind of these opposing forces, um, because on the one hand. Obviously there's this AI arms race, um, you can't slow down progress. I know there was in in the US this sort of movement to like take a six month pause on AI progress which is not gonna happen um but you know on the one hand you have that right? you've got. At this this push to keep advancing and um and and there is this race going on on the other hand so many potential issues that are being thought through um how do you thread that needle like these are opposing forces. What are the different approaches to making sure that on the company level by the way that you can move forward, that you're not falling behind and at the same time you're being thoughtful? Yeah, I think that that's really important, especially for companies. I think it's really important that you know even before you. Start looking at regulations and whether and how you're going to comply to really create principles that that you as a company stand for. So at Microsoft, and I don't, we're not the only ones, but we were very early. You're a big one. We're a big one. We're big. Anybody heard of Microsoft in here? We are, we are big and because we're big and because we provide so much infrastructure to the governments and companies around the world, we really take these responsibilities pretty seriously and so what we had to do early early on before any AI laws were adopted, we created internal standards and that's where you as a company can say. Are we living up to our north star? What is our north star when it comes to making sure that we're trusted and we're trustworthy in terms of the AI that we're providing? And so we had a standard. We developed teams that would test against that standard. The standard included things like ensuring privacy, ensuring security. Security ensuring safety and fairness and making sure that the AI was inclusive, especially when it comes to accessibility issues. So those are pretty big requirements and we had teams that would make sure that we were abiding by that. We tested it was a very robust internal system. And we also published our standards so people could see it, so transparency was a big part of this too, and I think that that's the kind of responsibility that a company like Microsoft owes to our customers, which are also some very big companies and small and medium enterprises and startups, and what we also owe to our public sector customers as well. By the way, are you, are you surprised by the pace of Adoption. I mean, OpenAI's chat GPT, which Microsoft has a stake in, amassed 100 million users, subscribers within two months of its launch, fastest growing app ever. Did that surprise you? You've seen these other, you know, you've been a part of these other technological transformations. I have been. So when I was a commissioner of the US Federal Trade Commission, which, which was my last government role. Um, we used to see a lot of tech technological advances, and we felt like we were always behind. Now the pace of innovation is just accelerated. What used to take years to get out now takes months, and you know, regulators are trying to keep up. They're doing, you know, not a bad job in my view. And what we're seeing in companies. It is just to go to a point you made earlier, a real desire to be ahead, to be leaders, and also to make sure that it is safe and trusted, and that is a big job right now. But it is, but yes, things are moving incredibly quickly. Um, I wanna ask you also about the role of AI in productivity and in the impact, uh, to the workforce, um, and we talked a little bit about that yesterday as well and some of the opportunities, um, there's also uh a potential downside, right? There's a lot of concerns about what it does to jobs, um, you know, I think, I think we talk about it. A lot of like the superpower for employees which it absolutely can be. Can you talk a little bit about just how you look at the impact on the job force, the workforce, you know, both internally and externally, and how does that factor into how you think about the growth? Yeah, I think it's, it's really important to Understand that like here at this conference we have amazing people, amazing women who have been able to do incredible things with AI that I you know, listening to all of these panels I've just been blown away, um, that's a technical term for like really it's been awesome, um, and. At the same time I think it's important to think about the suite of of what's going to be happening particularly to women in the workforce as we go forward and that doesn't necessarily involve this cohort of women but sort of all women so what we are gonna. See is there jobs that are going to be augmented by AI they're going to be improved, you know, medical jobs of people who are in medicine, people who are in research, people who are doing pharmaceuticals, even the financial community. AI generative AI is just going to help them zoom ahead. There are those kinds of jobs we can think of as AI augmenting those roles, and then there are going to be jobs that are going to be disrupted. And you know that's going to be creative. We are, we know about that from what's what's happening in Hollywood. um we are also going to see that in administrative roles. We will see that in some sort of analytic roles, but not all of them. And as it turns out, so, uh, LinkedIn published some data and it got it out on International Women's Day. It turns out that women are going to be more impacted because they are, they take more and aspire to more of the jobs that will be disrupted than augmented and so what that means is it's really important for governments. And for companies to focus on how we can help women now get ready for that so that they just don't lose their jobs and then like they've got no place to go. So what does that mean? It means that we heard a lot about skilling uh over the last couple of days we absolutely need to focus on women in particular who are gonna need skilling and the jobs that that will be disrupted to help them get to that next level. There's also other things that companies can do, I think, to help with this in addition to skilling, and I should just note really quickly, Microsoft has already trained and skilled for AI about 100,000 people in Saudi and millions in just here, just here in Saudi Arabia, millions around the world, and by the end of this year we will hit about 160,000 in Saudi Arabia. Yeah, yeah, it's a big, but it's our responsibility, right? This is something that we can really help with and we partner with the government, we partner with our customers. It's really important to do skilling, but the other thing that companies can do super quick is you can, they can focus on their culture inside their companies to really drive AI training and all of that, and they can change the way they look at new new candidates for jobs. Think about the skills that people have, not their past experience. If you focus on skills, what you'll do is you'll increase by 13% the number of women that are considered for jobs globally. Well, um, Julie, I feel like we only scratched the surface, but as we said, really hefty topics, hopefully you'll be back, and it will be me interviewing you and not a bot or a humanoid, you know, robot so it will definitely be you, but thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you.

Christopher Young , Executive Vice President, Business Development, Strategy and Ventures, Microsoft Interviewer : Kristin Stoller, Editorial Director, Fortune 

Brainstorm AI 2024: The Shape of AI to Come 

All right, good afternoon everyone. Chris. Good to be here with you. Thanks for having me, of course. So I want to start off by talking about investments. Obviously, Microsoft is a big investor in the A I space, but I want to talk about embodied A I. So some of the recent investments Microsoft has made is robotic start up figure, self driving car, start up wave. Where do you see the biggest potential for embodied A I? And how does that fit into Microsoft's bigger investment strategy? So what you just described are two great examples of autonomous systems. And a couple of years ago we did some work and we said, you know, this was even pre generative A I, we felt that autonomous systems were really going to be some of the future applications that would really change how we lived our lives, how organizations function. But like when we look at that space, we think it's going to be a combination of self driving cars or self driving vehicles to put it more broadly speaking, you know, I think it's going to be less about transporting people around and a lot more about transporting goods and services around ultimately long haul trucking would be an example of that or just think about all the vehicles that operate in small warehouse contexts or even in a shipyard, you know, as you move goods off a ship onto trucks and the like and then on the, on the look, I think humanoid robotics is a, it's going to happen, that will be something, it will be, it will be quite commonplace. I think particularly in categories of work where it's very dangerous for people. Think about offshore oil rigs or you know, Antarctic, you know, oil drilling in Antarctica, this is going to be a lot of different opportunities I think for us to bring new types of embodied technology into those kinds of categories and it's pretty exciting. Yeah, definitely. And speaking of investments, obviously, we just heard open A I um Microsoft, a big investor. So where does that relationship currently stand? Are you partners? Are you competitors? How do you find a coexistence with us? We're great partners and you, and it was even mentioned by Jason a little bit earlier, you know, we invested in open A I a number of years ago, even pre pandemic. Um over time, we've had an amazing partnership if you think about all the great things we've been able to do together as partners. Um If you look back, I mean, it's just been, it's been a great partnership and I would say one of the more unique partnerships you even if you would see in technology, um obviously, we have a lot to that we're doing together. You know, you even see, you know, Mike at, at our ignite event. A couple of weeks ago, we announced a number of new innovations, all of our copilot innovations are built on with open A I technology as part of it. And so we're really excited about the partnership and we continue to do a lot together. Speaking of ignite, there is a lot about um announcements around copilot including copilot actions. Tell us a little bit more about this and what excites you the most in terms of co pilots capabilities going forward. So three big things at at ignite, there were many, we had many announcements, I think 80 announcements, but three big ones, you just mentioned copilot actions really templates or really being able to bring more agentic functions to co pilot. The second one was agents which is ultimately going to be the extension of how people do their work and integrating that into a process flow. And the third is really Azure A I foundry, which is going to enable developers to build a lot of their own copilot like capabilities, build their own agents. So we were really proud of all the announcements, but those are some of the big categories that we announced a couple weeks ago. I want to come to the audience team for questions. But first, I want to go back to what you said about Azure, tell us about what the advancements in that have been and what excites you about it for the future. So first of all, think about Microsoft as a platform company, we have, you know, we we are bringing a diversity of capabilities to help developers build their own tools, their own co pilots, their own agents into, you know, into act. And that's really what Azure A I foundry is all about. And you're seeing a lot of that, I would say if you look back, we were really one of the first companies through github Copilot to bring capabilities for developers to do more code development. Now, what we're doing is bringing capabilities and tools for developers to build agents, to build co plots and to do that using a diversity of models. We have a lot of different models on our catalog and are allowing developers to use what works best for them. Make sense. Any questions for anyone over here? All right, good because I have a lot I can keep going. So um earlier last month, so Microsoft unveiled a new open source multi agent A I system system called Magnetic One. How is that different from all the other multi agent systems out there today? And where do you see the most commercial success there? So what you're referencing is some work that came out of our Microsoft Research Organization and they published a paper on on multi agent, which is an agentic framework. And if you think about it, it's really based on a lot of the theory that, you know, agents will function in teams in many ways, just like people do. And you'll have a lead, for example, a lead agent that will direct some of the specific work that will happen by very specific functional agents. And part of the reason for that is as you go through any completion of task, whether it takes a period of time or whether it has more both facets to it, there will be changes, there will be adjustments that need to be made and the lead agent will direct that work similar to the way a team leader might lead work in a project. And so it mirrors that concept, that concept. But if you think about it this way, ultimately, agents will need to function in concert with one another because there will be many different agents that work in an organization uh that might be even at work on behalf of an individual. And so having a lead agent that directs the functionality of other agents is really the core concept of that. And you know, you've seen a lot of this, you saw a lot of this ignite, we're focusing on, on extending the value of what we're doing with copilots into the world of agents. And, and the, and the multi agent framework is really a part of that. Makes sense. Another announcement this year that I personally found fascinating was the announcement around three Mile Island. Um So Microsoft announced plans to reopen it to um support A I. Can you talk to me a little bit about what the future of the nuclear industry is as it relates to A I? And then also how does that relate to sustainability? I'd love to hear your thoughts. So look, the way we look at nuclear, nuclear is it is a, it is a clean energy source that will become part of our overall portfolio of energy sources that we use for delivering, you know, our data center capacity around the world. And you know, we expect there's going to be a diversity of energy sources, you know, we've made certain commitments as a company to being carbon neutral and even carbon negative in 2030. And so nuclear is a part of that portfolio. And that's, you know, that's really what that announcement was. It's part of a much bigger strategy that we've got as a company. Got you interesting and how are you looking about sustainability as it relates to it as well? So the way we think about sustainability is number one, it's a must. And you know, we expect that we expect that, you know, there's going to be a lot of different. In fact, there's a, there's a recent blog that we publish, which are some of the trends that we see. And one of the big trends that we see are is really, you know, the ability to deliver more and more compute past capacity with a lot better efficiency. So for example, better efficiency around how we build data centers in the first place, better efficiency on how we do cooling in data centers. That's one of the big ways uh in which power gets used in a data center context is that the cooling take, it takes a lot of energy being more water efficient in how we do and how we run our data centers as well. So, you know, we have a series of different methods that we're employing in our data centers. You know, some of them we've been doing for a while, others are new. We continue to work with our partners, all of our partners like NVIDIA A MD, even the in House Silicon that we're building at Microsoft, all of that is with an eye towards making our data centers more efficient, more effective and ultimately part of a more sustainable uh delivery mechanism across what we do around the globe. If you had to pick um three big bets that you would make on A I in 2025 or big trends, what would those be? Well, I'll tell you what we're investing in right now. Um because I as was mentioned earlier, you know, one of my responsibilities is for our venture arm M 12 at Microsoft. And so a couple of key categories that I think are really important. One is broadly speaking A I infrastructure. But if I were to break that down into some core components, one aspect of that is going to be cyber security near and dear to my heart. I used to be in cyber for a long time. But, you know, for example, we've invested in a company called hidden layer and their, their focus is protecting models against being manipulated by third party actors because the models themselves will become a tax surface for malicious actors. And so that's just one example, we're all of seeing need, for example, for data governance and data compliance, data protection. So if you think about this way, as we bring more A I capabilities into organizations, those A I agents, the A I CO pilots are going to want to access information. Um you need better governance, you need identity capabilities. And so we're seeing a resurgence, we've invested in a number of companies reliance A I is one we recently invested in in that space, that's in the data governance category. We also have a number of our own products at Microsoft first party products that are in this category. And then we're even seeing the need for new databases in some cases, like one of our recent investments was a company called Neon. It's a serverless Postgres database. And we're seeing, you know, we're seeing a lot of demand for different database models, different data architectures as it relates to developers, building new applications that are A I first in nature. And so there's so much happening right now, but that broad category of capabilities that are A I infrastructure enablers is a big area that I think is important to focus on. That's where we're making a lot of bets. And then some of the other ones, you just said a moment ago, embodied A I. Although the last one I'd add is I do, I do think there's a lot of opportunity in uh generally speaking in the health care space all the way from patient care and delivery through drug discovery and development. A lot of exciting companies that are using A I. One example I would share is we, we recently invested in a company called Invita uh uh in Beta and in beta. What they do is they map, they're using generative A I to essentially study what happens in nature and look for the natural remedies that nature has for certain ailments like eczema is one that they've got actually a few drugs and trials to, to treat eczema using natural remedies that occur in nature. And so, you know, those are some, that's just one example of many, you know, we've invested in companies that are um using A I as a better mechanism for diagnosing or assisting pathologists and radiologists in the diagnoses of cancer by being, you know, just really good at the screening aspects of this. So I think there's a lot to be done there across the board in health care and it should hopefully raise the bar for health outcome for all of us. And I love that you have this cybersecurity background too. I think it's so fascinating. So I'm going to ask you on the flip side of things then what, what is your biggest fear right now as it relates to cyber security and A I uh I mean, there's, there's near term fears and there's long term fears. I mean, I look, you, you, my wife would tell you that, you know, being married to somebody like me, you have a certain degree of, of paranoia as your baseline. Same with a journalist. So, yeah, but I, I would tell you, uh look, I think there's a real need for responsible A I it's one of the reasons why at Microsoft, we've invested really heavily in really testing and a lot of the, the use cases around, you know, looking for what we think could be model manipulation, misinformation, disinformation. You know, there's a lot of focus on that the last couple of months here and just even in the United States, given the election people were, were on the, I would say really on the lookout for that. And I think we, you know, we came through all things being equal, came through without a lot of too many big alarms on that on that front. So I think we have to be mindful though that everything that we do with models for good can be flipped and turned to be done, you know, be used by malicious actors. And so just making sure we have the right security models, that's why responsible A I is really important. It's one area we've invested heavily at Microsoft and we encourage all of our own customers, our partners to have their own investments and responsible A I for that reason, you know, in the, in the long run, you know, we'll find new things, we'll have new challenges we face. Uh but I actually, I am pretty confident that we're making a lot of the right decisions and we, we'll, we'll work through challenges as they arise. My words. Well, thank you so much, Chris. I appreciate it. Thanks for joining us. Thank you.

Presenter: Amos Miller, Founder and CEO, Glidance

Brainstorm AI 2024: Now You’re Gliding - Independence Through AI

Hi, everyone. Are you here? Great. Uh Thank you. I'm Amos Miller. I'm here with Paul Willard from Grep VC, one of our early investors. And before we start, I wanted to ask if you would close your eyes for a moment. Don't be afraid. It's ok. And when I snap my fingers, you can open them again. But what if I never snap? You've had sight for most of your life. You saw the smile of a loved one. You saw the colors of spring and now you feel the chill of uncertainty. Will you ever again be able to take that walk on an autumn day? Will you ever feel independent again? I snapped. You can open. So I'm Amos Miller. I'm the founder and CEO of guidance. I'm also a father, a friend. I'm also blind. Uh when I lost my sight in my early twenties, I experienced that chill. I had to go and learn how to navigate and get around independently as a blind person while uh on campus, learning computer science, going through the halls of London Business School, walking my daughter to kindergarten, traveling the world with Microsoft. It was stressful. It was hard and all that time. I am working at Microsoft really building one of some of the most advanced technologies on the planet. NASA is landing rovers on Mars. And I knew that I had to look into how do we tap into this advancements, these advancements in technology to really revolutionize independent mobility for blind people. My work led me to an investment by Satya Adela, the CEO of Microsoft uh where we developed one of the leading navigation technologies for the blind called Soundscape. It's an amazing innovation, but still we are not getting more blind people out. And about how many blind people did you see today? Statistically one in 100 people, you should see more blind people out and about. So I really started to real look at this problem and I realized I wanna describe to you what the problem is here over the in the US, in the in the world. There are 43 million people who are blind, the great majority lose their sight later in life. For macular degeneration, glaucoma diabetes. The numbers are expected to grow by 55% in the next 30 years. And here's the issue. It doesn't really matter how much technology we throw at them. As long as they're using a white cane or a guide dog, it's not going to work. There are only 2% of blind people who actually use canes and dogs. And why is that resources, money time. It takes five years and amount almost $100,000 to train one blind person to use a white cane or a guide dog and have them confidently get around the LA in the U si. Think the the presenter uh told there's 1 million blind people. Actually, if you count low vision, 2,000,003 million, the the largest guide dog school trained 225 dogs last year, it's completely out of whack. The system is simply unable to cope with the volume and is failing millions of people who want to get out. And about. So imagine if we had a new kind of mobility aid, a mobility aid that was quick to learn, easy to use and affordable an intelligent guide that was with you keeping you safe guiding you around, you will be back on your feet in no time. Our work at glance is pioneering the era of intelligent guides glide. As you can see on the screen is an intelligent guide with two wheels on the ground. A long handle, you hold on to the handle, you nudge the device forward. It uses autonomous driving technology to guide the person. Keep you on a safe path, steer you around obstacles and take you all the way to your destination. This is an experience that is as familiar to a blind person as holding onto someone's elbow just like I did with Paul when I came onto the stage so quick to learn easy to use and affordability is key. Most blind people can afford to have a cell phone glide is designed to cost like a cellphone 1499 for the device, a $30 subscription getting making mobility accessible to millions of people rather than just thousands. Now under the hood glide is powered by our proprietary sensible wayfinding system. This is the most advanced foundational model for set for effective navigation in complex unstructured pedestrian environments. This means that we are not only tapping into the multibillion dollar consumer blind navigation market, but we are also. But this uh we this platform will power the future in which embodied agents, intelligent guides, humanoids and other robots inhabit and share the space in which we live, work and travel. We will also empower businesses like hotels and airports and uh hospitals to make their spaces more accessible, improve the customer experience and critically reduce risk of litigation uh due to uh inaccessibility. Now, our glide has been tested by over 1000 blind people to date. And what we've done is what they tell us is they finally feel a sense of hope. They tell us that this is the most important innovation. Since the arrival of the iphone, we've collected almost a million dollars in pre orders. We've hired an amazing engineering team, folks from Amazon from irobot from symbolic and other places to deliver the product. We are raising funds. Um We are raising funds to bring the product to market in about 12 months and really position guidance to dominate the intelligent guide category. So if you're interested, please please reach out. We'll also be do doing some demos outside and I promise you that they will come a day in which you will delight in seeing someone glide past you on a sunny day, walking their daughter to kindergarten. Thank you.

Beck Bailey, Global Chief Diversity Officer, Managing Director Accenture Charlotte Burrows, Chair, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Chief Diversity Officer, Corporate Vice President of Talent and Learning, Microsoft  Moderator: Indrani Sen, Fortune

Impact Initiative 2024: Building An Inclusive And Future-Ready Workforce

Photography by Rebecca Greenfield/Fortune

Beck Bailey, Global Chief Diversity Officer, Managing Director Accenture Charlotte Burrows, Chair, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Chief Diversity Officer, Corporate Vice President of Talent and Learning, Microsoft, Indrani Sen, Fortune

Beck Bailey, Global Chief Diversity Officer, Managing Director Accenture Charlotte Burrows, Chair, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Chief Diversity Officer, Corporate Vice President of Talent and Learning, Microsoft

Beck Bailey, Accenture, Charlotte Burrows, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Lindsay-Rae McIntyre, Microsoft, Indrani Sen, Fortune

Welcome. So wonderful to be here with you all. Uh We're gonna start with some questions that I have for our esteemed guests. Um But I want to just kind of put the word out that we will be. We're hoping that you all will, will ask some questions too. So start thinking about them. We're gonna have some mic handlers coming around a bit later on. Um So we're gonna jump right in and um I'm gonna actually start with you chair burrows. Uh a recent analysis of diversity in the tech industry from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission had some rather dispiriting conclusions. Uh It found that racial diversity has only slightly improved over the last two decades in, in tech and that women still make up less than a quarter of tech workers, which is basically the same as in 2005. Um That's far less than their representation in the workforce at large, which is closer to 50%. Um I wonder if I could ask you Chair Barris to kind of set us up in this conversation. You've called this like a snapshot of the industry. That's right. We had a lot of interest in the tech industry in particular because it has been growing jobs. That's great news and we had done in 2016, a snapshot of the industry and diversity there um There in so, unfortunately, what we found when we came back and did this, um you going up to 22 2022 data and the report's title kind of tells you the bottom line, high tech low inclusion. So while there was a lot of growth and a lot of hiring, what you saw was that the needle moved only a little bit since tw 2005 to 2022. So women, although they are almost half of the workforce in the United States are only about 22 to 23% of those who are working in the high tech workforce and also in the high tech sector. And by that, I mean, industries that have a fairly large concentration of um tech workers. At the same time, we did see some unfortunately very modest but some improvement for people of color, um vastly underrepresented, underrepresented for Latinos and for African Americans. Um African Americans are about 12% of the workforce, a little right around just under 7%. Um is what we found with respect to the workforce and the tech sector, um the tech workforce and uh the tech company and uh sector of the industries as well with uh Latinos, we saw some more progress over the last two decades. So, but still very underrepresented. We're talking about 9.9% of tech workers and in the tech workforce. And then, um they are, of course, something like 18.7% of the um entire US workforce. So there's still some work to do. And because we are the primary, um, you know, agency charged with looking for discrimination, we are thinking about this in a whole host of different ways. Um And to, to really understand what is going on with the industry. Um What I will say is that we're 60 years on since the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and of, since our agency was created, our anniversary is next year. And so we see this as there has been progress and I mean, that very sincerely, but we have a long way to go and I'll stop there because I, I'm excited for the conversation. So I'm gonna actually turn now to, to Lindsey Ray and Beck, you guys have been both working on this issue and kind of living it for many years now. Um I wonder if you could add some nuance to these pretty stark numbers that we're hearing from chair burrows. Um Are you seeing differences across tech in different sectors? Are there any outliers or success stories that you could point to? Um And what can we learn from those? Yeah, I think if I pick up where, where troughs sort of started the conversation you know, at Microsoft, we're gonna be 50 next year, right? And if we look at sort of the example of women in tech, you know, we have uh not yet published our recent report that will come out later this month, but, you know, women representation in tech roles alone is at 27% which is above the averages that were just mentioned. And women for the company are over 31% And that's on purpose, right, that we've been able to slowly grow, you know, year over year for at least the last five years. But it's as a result of a holistic strategy and, and in partnership with many partners, customers, not for profit organizations that are in our broader ecosystem so that we can grow the workforce, not only sort of bringing people into tech, inviting folks into the technology profession who maybe wouldn't have considered tech otherwise, but then making sure that once they arrive in tech, we are growing them intentionally and investing in their careers and their mentorship and their sponsorship so they can stay and thrive in tech. And I would just add that, you know, it's part of our business, right, that having representation in the technology industry allows us to create products that people love. And so when you look at sort of Microsoft's evolution from software to hardware to cloud to now A I being able to advance representation along the way through those industry shifts, has you know, been really bolted to the fact that, you know, for Microsoft, we have this huge inclusive mission that, you know, calls on us to empower the people and organizations on the planet and we can't do that without representation inside Microsoft too. Do you want to weigh in on this one? I will um I think similarly to our friends at Microsoft, our commitment to inclusion and diversity is central to the business strategy. And I think that's a key takeaway for all of us that we have to be thinking of. How does this tie to our business results for us thinking about um just 10 years ago, really moving to a skills driven organization because we wanted to be the leading provider of digital related services that meant we would have to recruit differently and build our workforce differently in order to achieve that. So we sat alongside that ambition, the ambition to be the most inclusive and diverse company in the world. Now, a great example of that is in India where we were in hyper growth, breaking through the myth that there weren't women available for those tech driven roles. And at that time, maybe 31% women in our workforce to today, over 49%. And just this year, we reached 50 to 50 parity in our accenture technology centers for women. And that required thinking differently about recruiting, measuring the recruitment process and our performance achievement process for equity, right. Where people are experiencing an equitable outcome and then really focusing on our culture and the ways that we support people to be successful. You know, listening to them, what do they need in order to thrive if it's return ships for women, coming back into the workforce, better parental policies, better flex work policies, whatever is going to actually help them thrive in that role. Yeah, I mean, hearing both of you talk, it's, you know, this is, this is such difficult work, it's difficult work to do and it's difficult work to express to explain. Uh sometimes success can be kind of incremental. Uh And yet, you know, it's still important. Um One of the big questions swirling around today, not just on this panel in the whole country and the panel previous to us is um do these efforts work uh does being intentional about de I and ESG more broadly make any difference? Um I wonder if you could talk about some of the biggest challenges both in doing and in showing this work. And, and I, I would love for chair burrows as well to, to weigh in on this, you want me to start. So I, what I would say is um the federal government obviously uh is a national employer. We're I think the biggest employer in the United States. And uh we also believe that this is important to our mission. So what does work? And I wanna be clear even though I gave you some, um, you know, not happy news at the beginning that this does work. And one of the things that, uh, particularly, and you intuitively, you know, this, but what we have also found and what research has found is that everybody does better if they feel respected and valued in the workplace and they're given those tools to really contribute. And that's how, as an employer and I'm speaking both as someone who has been working in civil rights employment for a long time, but also as the head of a roughly 2300% organization that, that gets people able to contribute and do well. And we have seen that over and over our mission makes it easy to bring people in for, you know, a diverse group of folks really interested in our work, but to keep them there and keep them feeling like they are valued and contributing, that takes more. And so I do wanna make sure that not withstanding that. I think that there are some difficulties that if this does work and it's really important. I think in this moment, I know there's a lot of pushback to understand that and to stay the course, um whether it be a diversity equity inclusion accessibility program or whatever one is calling it to be intentional about making sure every you get the best talent in the door and make sure that they all feel included and um able to contribute I I would add that, you know, it does work but it does require strategic patience and operational urgency, right? That making sure that at least when I look at Microsoft's journey, the work that we do in partnership with schools as early as middle school up through high school and university and then reimagining those on ramps to tech for adults who want to have a career change. All of those pieces of the puzzle really matter. And, and it is the totality of the system as well as the many things that sort of you and, and beck both pointed to that allow progress to be made, right? And I think it's, at at least for us it is about really learning and listening to sort of the employee experience and the ways in which people are feeling like they do have access and opportunity or not. And then really thinking creatively and collaboratively, I mean, the beautiful thing about this work is that, you know, we all partner with so many of our peers and our colleagues across industries across, you know, small companies, large companies to try and make progress together. Um And I think it's something that's really special about sort of this work because it, it does require all of us. Absolutely. Yeah, I think, you know, I'll have just that I think it is important to be evidence based right, to have the receipts. And for us that's thinking about um the measurement of our progress. And I know that this works because I can measure it. And we think really holistically about the quantitative and qualitative data, we need to know whether what we're doing is working or not and adjust our approach accordingly. The only thing I would add is, you know, uh accenture and other companies, Microsoft, we do release our data, right? And so the transparency and accountability to point on places where we are making progress, but also to be accountable where we know we have more to do. I think it's really important, you know, as I said, we're about to publish for, you know, the sixth year or DN I report but 11 years, you know, consistently and I think that that's part of the rhythm of being able to keep the conversation moving. Right. Right. And as you say, it's the, it's the areas for improvement as well as the successes, right? And the learnings from failures sometimes too. I won, I wonder if we could uh open this up. Uh We have some mic handlers here and if anyone has a question for our esteem, panelists, we would love to uh to hear from the rest of you. Um If we don't have any questions, I also have more questions. Um You uh Lindsay Ray, you touched on the need for a kind of a collective uh or at least like collaboration across industries. I know that Beck, this is something that you've thought a lot about also um when we're facing these kind of these, these huge intractable problems, do you see potential for collaboration across industries or for sharing of some of those learnings that we've been talking about? I mean, I would say absolutely right. As a company who's been doing this work for four decades, I often look to smaller organizations to see how they're innovating with sort of less of a legacy or less history because they can do innovative creative things that big companies can't. Um And then I have the opportunity to also share, you know, decades of love learning and best practices that would benefit smaller companies or places to start around data or learning or, you know, sort of transparency, motions, engagement of senior leadership and grass roots. And so, you know, it really is that sharing of information and sort of wisdom and, and uh creativity that I think keeps the conversation well and Lindsay Ray is on the top of my text chain. So, you know, um but I would say, you know, it is that collaboration, it's a space where the natural competition of companies can be suppressed a little bit because we are invested in what is, you know, societal good as well as good for our businesses. And, you know, we look at things like uh what you've done at Microsoft Lindsay Ray with accessibility and how widely you share that so that all of us can learn, you know, that's really appreciated that leadership role and that sharing and collaboration or a project that our companies undertook together with the prince's trust. Like we have to think about NGOS and governments and how we partner together in the UK. We looked at, you know, how is generative A I going to impact the youth population. And from that, we've been able to create a project that's going to scale up 1 million folks in the UK from socio economically disadvantaged communities to use gen A I to build their skills, to have mentorship, but also to use those tools to get their jobs. And so it's that collaborative energy that allows us to do that singularly, we wouldn't be able to do that on our own. I love that you brought up skill upping. It's obviously an issue not just for the next generation, but for those of us already in, in uh you know, decades into our careers, we might need some, some retraining or upskilling. How do you think about that challenge for the, for this A I driven era? Well, for us, I think the first question we ask anybody coming to accenture is what was the last thing you learned? And we do that because learning is so critical to staying relevant in our, in our field. And we want people who have both an appetite and an ambition for learning. It doesn't matter if what you learned was Python or generative A I or how to play Chapel R on the guitar. It just really doesn't matter what, what is important is that appetite for learning. Because we know that the talent market is constrained as, as chair Burroughs research shows. But we're not constrained. We can invest, we can skill, we can grow the skills that we need to drive the business forward and keep everyone skill relevant. And at the pace of change we're in, that's just, it's hypocritical. You can't allow people to lag in their skills to add on to Beck's point. I would say like it's, it's not only important that tech workers get upskilled and res skilled on the new era of A I, but we will only be successful if everybody has access and benefits from that technology. It's part of why we need representation in the engineering of A I but also access to and so you see corporate partnerships on, you know, making sure that we continue to invest in broadband and access to devices and access to digital skilling beyond the workplace through linkedin learning and other platforms. Because I think like accenture, there are lots of companies who are deeply committed to making sure that this next era of tech really does leap frog inclusion. So more people benefit. Absolutely. And if I could just add on that, the EOC has had I launched in 2021 an initiative looking at artificial intelligence and how that is affecting employment um both in terms of recruitment, et cetera. But also this question of, you know, the entire lifeline and making sure, you know, that as A I becomes more important and to how we work, the people who get the opportunity to learn how to use these new tools in their jobs will have a um running start. So as those opportunities who gets trained in an institution and organization really matters to the future of their ability to succeed, to being, you know, able to contribute and for the organization to that talent from everybody. And so that's another thing that we're looking at and reminding people about. But we've also done um a couple of quick documents that are on our website eoc.gov on disabilities and a um I'm so glad you raised that and how to make sure that as you use A I particularly for recruitment that you don't leave people out, don't leave talent on the table unintentionally um with disability issues. And then also for race, gender, national origin religion um under title seven as well as um color, I guess. I love that note to end on that. Don't leave talent on the table. Um So I would like to thank so much our esteemed panelists and the audience for your engagement with these super important issues going forward. Thanks for having you so grateful for you.

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