The Microsoft outage means no incessant email chimes or message pings, but still we stayed online

Microsoft is contending with a major global outage that is impacting tens of thousands of users, affecting essential services such as Outlook, Teams, and its AI platform Copilot. The company has acknowledged connectivity issues that are straining its servers, and they are actively working to mitigate the impact. Reports of problems peaked at nearly 140,000 users around 18:00 GMT on Thursday, according to monitoring site Downdetector.

Microsoft has not identified an indication that the outage was caused by a cyber-attack, stating that issues prevent users from viewing files or accessing calendar applications. The disruption affects Microsoft 365, a widely used online service by businesses for collaboration and communication. Despite Messaging and online meetings being largely functional, Microsoft warned that some restored services could become unresponsive again.

Users across the US, Japan, and Singapore among others have reported disruptions. The outage has also affected AI companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI, which utilize Microsoft's systems, leading to some tools not functioning as expected. This is not the first instance of such an outage from Microsoft, as earlier this year, they reported a cloud platform outage impacting its suite of productivity tools globally.