Microsoft has been pushing hard to make Visual Studio Code a major way to consume its AI services, mostly in the form of GitHub Copilot. GitHub Copilot’s deep integration with VS Code brings many conveniences — inline autocomplete, for instance — but it’s frustrating for those, like me, who would rather use another model provider, or even a locally hosted LLM, for those functions.
Visual Studio Code 1.122 introduced a new feature, “Use BYOK [Bring Your Own Key] without a GitHub sign-in,” that allows you to “use chat, tools, and MCP servers in air-gapped or restricted environments where GitHub sign-in isn’t possible.” More importantly, it “enables fully offline workflows with local models like Ollama.”
In other words, you can now use locally hosted LLMs for chat, tools, and Model Context Protocol servers inside Visual Studio Code. The one thing you still can’t do is use a local LLM for inline and next-edit suggestions — at least, not without additional tooling.
Choosing a model for BYOK
Microsoft's unproven quantum claims highlight the challenges and skepticism in advancing topological quantum computing commercially.
The post Scientist questions Microsoft’s quantum computing claims in Nature paper appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
Project Kilby highlights the growing trend of tech giants securing dedicated energy sources, impacting energy markets and AI infrastructure.
The post Microsoft’s Project Kilby aims for power delivery by 2028, Stifel says appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
The massive data center investments by tech giants could lead to significant financial risks if AI demand doesn't meet expectations.
The post Meta and Microsoft commit tens of billions each to data center leases as industry tops $850B appeared first on Crypto Briefing.
The AI IPO tsunami on the stock market has only recently gotten under way, with SpaceX’s more-than-$2 trillion IPO likely to be followed in several months by OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s IPOs — each of which is likely to hit $1 trillion.
That will mint three new trillion-dollar AI companies in a matter of months, all of which compete with Microsoft.
Wall Street has never seen anything like it. Previously, the most money raised by all IPOs in a single year was $671 billion in 2021. It took 38,644 deals to get to that figure. Compare that to three deals this year that by themselves will likely total $4 trillion.
The numbers are eye-popping.
For Microsoft though, it’s not the numbers themselves that are important. It’s what will happen to the company once it as three newly minted trillion-dollar AI competitors. Until recently, when it came to AI, Microsoft was king of the hill. But can it keep that place?
Microsoft’s weakened position
The IPOs come at a particularly fraught time for Microso
Nvidia and Microsoft this month touted the reinvention of computers with a new class of “agentic AI PCs” that will “reinvent the way PCs work.”
That’s how Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang described the computers at the recent Computex trade show. At the event, Nvidia introduced its first AI-focused PC chip called N1X, which has an integrated CPU and GPU and will be used in agentic AI PCs.
Nvidia’s new RTX Spark PCs are the first in a major “PC reinvention for 40 years,” Huang said, likening them to AI phones. “You could talk to it, it could look at you. You could ask it to read files… [or] go help you do research.”
Not so fast, say analysts, who argue the computers are mostly repackaged AI PCs that shouldn’t necessarily drive enterprise upgrades.
“Agentic AI PCs is a strange term that should probably be deemphasized,” said Leonard Lee, principal analyst at neXt Curve. “Depending on use case, PCs of the last two generations are ‘agentic AI’-capable.”
Skeptical of the hype, analysts said many cu
Chevron's direct power supply to Microsoft's AI centers highlights fossil fuels' enduring role in tech growth, impacting energy transition dynamics.
The post Chevron partners with Microsoft for 20-year power production deal to fuel AI data centers appeared first on Crypto Briefing.