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“I don’t feel I’m able to continue at the pace a startup requires,” she wrote in an internal Slack message, which she also shared on X. “After thinking about it for several months, I ultimately have to admit that the amount of consistent stress and workload have pushed me beyond what my health can sustain physically.”

On Wednesday, OpenAI told TechCrunch that Weng would be rejoining the company, where she previously served as the VP of AI Safety Research.

According to a company spokesperson, Weng will lead a top-level team focused on accelerating OpenAI’s internal research. This team will support cross-research work on recursive self-improvement, a process that would allow an AI system to iterate on itself to become more powerful.

This move could be read as contradictory to Weng’s statements about the impact of working at a fast-paced startup on her health — however, she likely won’t face as much direct pressure while working at a company where she isn’t a co-founder. Still, in a time of fierce competition for talent among AI labs, this high-profile departure is notable.

Thinking Machines co-founder and former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati replied to Weng’s X post earlier this week and expressed support for her decision to focus on her health. It is unclear if Murati was aware that Weng would rejoin OpenAI.

“We’ll miss you, it’s been wonderful building Thinky together. I’m glad that you’re putting your health first. Thank you for everything,” Murati wrote in response to Weng’s post.

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The partnership is part of a larger relaunch centered around the next-generation Winamp Player, scheduled to arrive in the first half of 2027. According to the companies, the new player is designed to “reinvent the music player for the streaming era” by combining premium music streaming with users’ local music libraries, internet radio stations, podcasts, personal cloud-based collections, and other audio sources within a single app.

While a lot of the details remain under wraps, Winamp promises an emphasis on personalization through a customizable interface, social features, and ways to discover, organize, and enjoy music. The company asserts that its subscription service will “deliver a fundamentally different experience from today’s traditional digital streaming platforms.”

Though loyal Winamp users who grew up during the MP3 boom are likely to be excited by this news, it’s unclear whether many people will choose to pay for yet another music subscription. The streaming market is already saturated with giants like Spotify, Apple Music, and YouTube Music. However, Winamp touts that its free desktop player is actively used by more than 40 million users.

The announcement also reflects a resurgence of retro tech. Cassette tapes, MP3 players, and even iPods have all seen renewed interest recently as users embrace more nostalgic ways to experience music. Winamp is betting that its music player can make a comeback with modern streaming built in.

While Winamp has undergone several revamps over the years, this may be its most deliberate return to its core audience. During the web3 boom, it explored NFT integration, enabling users to link music-related NFTs to their player. Previous plans included transforming Winamp into a cross-platform mobile audio app. More recently, the company has pivoted toward supporting creators, launching tools for artists, including monetization, fan engagement, and music distribution services.

When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This doesn’t affect our editorial independence.

Lauren covers media, streaming, apps and platforms at TechCrunch.

You can contact or verify outreach from Lauren by emailing [email protected] or via encrypted message at laurenforris22.25 on Signal.

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Current carbon emissions are projected to surpass the Paris Climate Agreement's limit of 2°C above preindustrial levels. Ocean iron fertilization—in which iron is added to surface water to stimulate phytoplankton growth for carbon dioxide removal—is a potential solution. However, the ecological impacts of this strategy, such as creating runaway algal blooms and depleting nutrients in the water, have been a limitation.

Jun Yu, Adam Martiny and colleagues used an ocean iron fertilization model to assess the climate benefits and ecological trade-offs of the approach. By analyzing more than six decades of fertilization data, they found that net carbon dioxide removal was up to 5.3 parts per million, which corresponds to a removal rate of 0.70 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year.

Furthermore, Yu and colleagues found that the most productive areas—that is, the areas with the largest plankton blooms—after iron fertilization were the Southern Ocean and the equatorial Pacific. A key ecological issue with the strategy involves the depletion of macronutrients from the water column, particularly in areas near the tropical Pacific, which can propagate through the food chain and result in declines in macrozooplankton biomass.

However, the authors determined that these disturbances posed less risk when fertilization was deployed in higher latitudes. Specifically, they note that fertilizing 0.35% of the ocean in the equatorial Pacific leads to a minimum decline of 10% in macrozooplankton biomass, while fertilizing 0.2% of the Southern Ocean led to a 10% increase in macrozooplankton.

The authors suggest that fertilizing the Southern Ocean offers the best balance between ecological disturbance and carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. However, they caution that ocean iron fertilization has downstream effects and that any localized interventions will inherently have nonlocal effects.

Publication details

Jun Yu et al, Climate benefit and ecological cost trade-offs for ocean iron fertilization, Nature (2026). DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10795-y

Journal information: Nature

Provided by University of California

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Citation: The oceans near Australia may be the best places to fertilize for removing carbon dioxide (2026, July 29) retrieved 29 July 2026 from https://phys.org/news/2026-07-oceans-australia-fertilize-carbon-dioxide.html

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"If you really want to get to 2%, I think you have to raise interest rates," Gundlach said on CNBC's "Closing Bell" Wednesday after the Fed's latest policy decision. "I think getting 2% is going to take a long time. We might not get there over the course of the next couple of years."

The Fed left its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a range of 3.5% to 3.75%, a decision that was widely expected. The move was not approved unanimously, however, with three policy members dissenting in favor of raising rates by a quarter percentage point.

Gundlach said the divergent moves across the Treasury curve following the announcement showed investors' skepticism that the Fed will ultimately follow through.

"The two-year Treasury rallied today because it thinks the Fed is taking its time," he said. "And the long bond yield went up significantly after the press conference, because the bond market vigilantes are saying, 'If you really want us to believe your rhetoric, you've got to start acting.'"

The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield rose more than 7 basis points to 4.681%, while the 30-year bond yield surged to 5.213% for its highest level since 2007. Meanwhile, the policy-sensitive two-year Treasury yield fell 3 basis points to 4.244%.

The long end is generally tied to expectations for inflation and deficits, while the short end is closely related to interest-rate expectations in the shorter run.

Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh stressed that the Fed will take necessary steps to meet its 2% inflation goal.

"I understand the desire for rolling forecasts and commentary from this committee, but for our part, we need to observe market reaction to developments direct and unfiltered," Warsh said. "I want to stress, of course, that decisions by this committee matter a great deal, and where necessary and appropriate, we will not hesitate to act." %!s()

Here's how the company did relative to LSEG consensus:

• Earnings per share: $4.74 adjusted. That may not compare with the $4.24 adj. per share expected by LSEG
• Revenue: $90.01 billion vs. $87.62 billion expected

Microsoft's revenue grew about 18% year over year in the quarter, which ended on June 30, according to a statement. 

Net income of $35.77 billion, or $4.81 per share, increased from $27.23 billion, or $3.65 per share, in the same quarter a year ago. Microsoft cited a $3.2 billion gain from its investment in artificial intelligence lab Anthropic and lower-than-expected costs tied to its first-ever voluntary retirement program. Meanwhile, its Xbox gaming business received an impairment charge.

As of Wednesday's close, the software maker's shares have given up 19% so far in 2026, while the S&P 500 index has gained about 7%.  Investors have squeezed longstanding software stocks this year, acting on fears of disruption from generative artificial intelligence models.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is confronting "some concentration risk" with its OpenAI relationship, especially with the ascent of open-source models, Deutsche Bank analysts, who recommend buying Microsoft stock, said in a note last week. Microsoft said in January that around 45% of its $625 billion in commercial remaining performance obligations were tied to OpenAI.

When it comes to allocating computing capacity, CEO Satya Nadella has been trying to balance the needs of the Azure cloud, research and applications such as the Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant. If researchers get ahold of more AI chips for model training, that means fewer will be available for cloud clients.

The company said commercial remaining performance obligations, a measure of unearned revenue and unrecognized revenue, increased 8% to $678 billion from the previous quarter. Sequential growth was driven by commitments from clients other than AI model developers, Microsoft said.

Capital expenditures and finance leases for the quarter, at $41 billion, jumped 69%.

Microsoft's finance chief, Amy Hood, reiterated plans for 2026 capital spending. But she said it will lengthen the useful life of office and data center buildings to 25 years from 15. And more future data center leases will appear as operating leases instead of finance leases, she said. The adjustment will lead to roughly $175 billion in capital expenditures and finance leases, Hood said.

For the 2027 fiscal year, Hood said she sees further growth in capital expenditures, pointing to "demand signals across our portfolio."

Free cash flow, at $19.64 billion, plummeted 23%. Hood said she expects Microsoft to be positive free cash flow in the 2027 fiscal year.

Microsoft's forecast includes $89.85 to $90.95 in fiscal first-quarter revenue, which would be up 16%. Analysts surveyed by LSEG were looking for $89.66 billion.

Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud segment featuring Azure posted $39.31 billion in revenue, up 31.6% year over year and more than the $38.16 billion consensus among analysts polled by StreetAccount.

Azure growth accelerated to 43%, or 43% at constant currency, compared with 40% in the prior quarter. Analysts polled by CNBC and StreetAccount had been looking for 40% and 40.2% Azure growth at constant currency.

Microsoft said Azure revenue in the 2026 fiscal year exceeded $100 billion for the first time, up 41%. At that size, the business trails Amazon Web Services while remaining larger than Alphabet's Google Cloud.

Hood projected 45% Azure growth at constant currency for the fiscal first quarter, above StreetAccount's 41.4% consensus.

Read more CNBC tech news

• Microsoft beats Q4 cloud expectations as full-year Azure revenue tops $100 billion
• Meta's Reality Labs lost over $4.6 billion in second quarter
• Meta posts earnings miss, issues light revenue guidance
• Tim Cook's last earnings call comes at momentous time for Apple with stock at record

The Productivity and Business Processes segment, which includes Office, Dynamics and LinkedIn, produced $37.85 billion in revenue, up 14.3% and above the $37.19 billion StreetAccount consensus.

The company pointed to over 30 million paid seats for the Microsoft 365 Copilot work assistant. There were more than 20 million as of April.

Hundreds of enterprise customers have purchased millions of seats for high-end E7 productivity software bundles, Nadella said on a conference call with analysts. He said the GitHub Copilot coding assistant now has 50 million users.

Microsoft's More Personal Computing segment, containing Bing, Surface, Windows and Xbox, contributed $12.85 billion in revenue, which was down 4.4% and higher than StreetAccount's $12.17 billion consensus.

The company said sales of devices and Windows licenses to device makers were down 7%. Technology industry researcher Gartner estimated that PC shipments declined 4.2%.

Xbox revenue declined 10%. Earlier this month the unit's CEO, Asha Sharma, announced job cuts and said four studios would spin out.

During the fiscal fourth quarter, Microsoft introduced a cost-efficient AI coding model, picked LinkedIn executive Dan Shapero to take over the business social network and lowered Xbox Game Pass subscription prices.

Executives are scheduled to discuss the results with analysts and issue guidance on a conference call starting at 5:30 p.m. ET.

Microsoft stock chart.

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