Microsoft is reportedly mandating internal AI tool usage. It has also added AI tools as one of the factors in employee performance evaluations. The internal push to use AI tools comes amid reports of more lay-offs expected in July 2025.
In Short:
Microsoft wants its employees to use its AI tools
It has asked managers to evaluate employees based on their AI usage
The company is reportedly planning to cut off more jobs in July 2025
Microsoft wants its employees to use its artificial intelligence tool. Not just use it—the company is reportedly planning to make AI tools one of the factors to evaluate performance of the employees. According to Business Insider, Microsoft is concerned about the low adoption rates of its own AI services and has therefore instructed managers to evaluate employees based on their use of internal AI tools.
Cloudflare has launched a tool that blocks bot crawlers from accessing content without permission or compensation to help websites make money from AI firms trying to access and train on their content, the software company said on Tuesday.
The tool allows website owners to choose whether artificial intelligence crawlers can access their material and set a price for access through a "pay per crawl" model, which will help them control how their work is used and compensated, Cloudflare said.
With AI crawlers increasingly collecting content without sending visitors to the original source, website owners are looking to develop additional revenue sources as search traffic referrals that once generated advertising revenue decline.
The initiative is supported by major publishers including Condé Nast and Associated Press, as well as social media companies such as Reddit and Pinterest.
Cloudflare's Chief Strategy Officer Stephanie Cohen said the goal of such tools was to give publishers control over their content, and ensure a sustainable ecosystem for online content creators and AI companies.
"The change in traffic patterns has been rapid, and something needed to change," Cohen said in an interview. "This is just the beginning of a new model for the internet."
Google, for example, has seen its ratio of crawls to visitors referred back to sites drop to 18:1 from 6:1 just six months ago, according to Cloudflare data, suggesting the search giant is maintaining its crawling but decreasing referrals.
The decline could be a result of users finding answers directly within Google's search results, such as AI Overviews. Still, Google's ratio is much higher than other AI companies, such as OpenAI's 1,500:1.
For decades, search engines have indexed content on the internet directing users back to websites, an approach that rewards creators for producing quality content. However, AI companies' crawlers have disrupted this model because they harvest material without sending visitors to the original source and aggregate information through chatbots such as ChatGPT, depriving creators of revenue and recognition.
Many AI companies are circumventing a common web standard used by publishers to block the scraping of their content for use in AI systems, and argue they have broken no laws in accessing content for free.
In response, some publishers, including the New York Times, have sued AI companies for copyright infringement, while others have struck deals to license their content.
Reddit, for example, has sued AI startup Anthropic for allegedly scraping Reddit user comments to train its AI chatbot, while inking a content licensing deal with Google.
Grammarly has signed a deal to acquire email efficiency tool Superhuman as part of the company's push to build an artificial intelligence-powered productivity suite and diversify its business, its executives told Reuters in an interview.
The San Francisco-based companies declined to disclose the financial terms of the deal. Superhuman, once an exclusive email tool boasting a long waitlist for new users, was last valued at $825 million in 2021, and currently has an annual revenue of about $35 million
.Grammarly's acquisition of Superhuman follows its recent $1 billion funding from General Catalyst, which gives it dry powder to create a collection of AI-powered workplace tools. Founded in 2009, the company has over 40 million daily users and an annual revenue exceeding $700 million. It's working on a name change with an ambition to expand beyond grammar correction.
Superhuman, with over $110 million in funding from investors including IVP and Andreessen Horowitz, has been trying to create an efficient email experience by integrating AI.
The company claims its users send and respond to 72% more emails per hour, and the percentage of emails composed with its AI tools has increased fivefold in the past year. It also faces growing competition as email giants from Google to Microsoft are adding more AI features.
"Email continues to be the dominant communication tool for the world. Professionals spend something like three hours a day in their inboxes. It's by far the most used work app, foundational to any productivity suite," said Shishir Mehrotra, CEO of Grammarly. "Superhuman is the obvious leading innovator in the space."
Last year’s purchase of startup Coda gave Grammarly a platform for AI agents to help users research, analyze, and collaborate. Email, according to Mehrotra who co-founded Coda, was the next logical step.
Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra will join Grammarly as part of the deal, along with over 100 Superhuman employees.
“The Superhuman product, team, and brand will continue,” Mehrotra said. “It’s a very well-used product by tens of thousands of people, and we want to see them continue to make progress.”
Vohra said that the deal will give Superhuman access to “significantly greater resources” and allow it to invest more heavily in AI, as well as expand into calendars, tasks, and collaboration tools.
Mehrotra and Vohra see an opportunity to integrate Grammarly’s AI agents directly into Superhuman, and build the tools for enterprise customers.
The vision is for users to tap into a network of specialized agents, pulling data from across their digital workflows such as emails and documents, which will reduce time spent searching for information or crafting responses. The company is also entering a crowded space of AI productivity tools, competing with tech giants such as Salesforce and a wave of startups.
Key Points
Figma stock popped 5% in its second day of trading, after shares more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut.
The design software vendor is the latest tech company to hit the public markets after an extended IPO drought.
Figma opened at $85 under the ticker FIG.
Shares of design software vendor Figma popped more than 5% on Friday, a day after the stock more than tripled in its New York Stock Exchange debut.
Figma opened at $85 on Thursday under the ticker FIG, and shares closed at $115.50 for a 250% gain. On Friday, the stock traded above $120.
Figma is the latest tech company to hit the public markets after an extended IPO drought. Artificial intelligence infrastructure provider CoreWeave debuted in March, followed by the digital physical therapy company Hinge Health in May.
The stablecoin issuer Circle, virtual chronic care company Omada Health and the online banking services provider Chime all went public in June.
In an update to its prospectus last week, Figma said it would price shares at $25 to $28 each. On Monday, it issued another update and said it expected pricing between $30 and $32. The company ultimately priced shares $1 above that range.
Figma, founded in 2012, almost had a very different story.
Adobe tried to buy the company for $20 billion in 2022, but after U.K. regulators said the acquisition would likely harm competition, the deal fell apart the following year.
The San Francisco-based company ranked 45th on CNBC’s 2025 Disruptor 50 list of private companies.
Curated by journalists from DevBlog...
