Technical Issue, Not Due To AI: Microsoft Reveals What Caused Global Outage

The daylong Microsoft outage that disrupted services like Outlook and Teams across the world stemmed from a network upgrade, the tech giant has said. This was a technical issue and not related to cyber or AI agents, Microsoft clarified in an online post, after its services started restoring gradually.

"The incident was introduced by an issue during an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced following a recent network change. We have addressed the underlying issue and continue to restore service to remaining customers and regions," Microsoft said.

The IT company behind some of the world's most popular office software apologised for the disruption that impacted critical services in dozens of countries.

The outage that affected Outlook, Teams, Copilot, and Microsoft 365 services began late Thursday, impacting businesses, offices, schools, and airlines. The recovery started Friday afternoon, with many services still facing hiccups in the evening.

According to Dowandetector, the outage impacted 74 countries and territories in an hour. Several users were unable to access their Outlook email accounts and faced other errors across its suite of apps.

"We are seeing broad recovery and stability across our services. Given the scale of demand, we restored services gradually, validating stability at each stage. While this took longer, it helped ensure a stable restoration," Microsoft said.

The company assured that it will provide a full post-incident report after a complete review.