Microsoft Outage Disrupts Services in 74 Countries for Over 20 Hours
A major Microsoft outage affecting Teams, Outlook, and Copilot disrupted schools, healthcare systems, governments, and businesses across at least 74 countries for more than 20 hours. The incident, attributed to elevated load following a network capacity upgrade rather than a cyber-security breach, also impacted OpenAI and Anthropic services and pressured Microsoft shares.
A widespread Microsoft outage disrupted operations for schools, healthcare systems, businesses, courts, and governments around the world, lasting more than 20 hours. Connectivity problems affected Microsoft 365 services including Teams, Outlook, and the AI software Copilot, with issues reported in at least 74 countries.
Microsoft stated that the disruption was not a cyber-security incident. Instead, it was caused by a technical issue stemming from an earlier network capacity upgrade that led to elevated load on the company's infrastructure. To protect delayed messages during the incident, Microsoft extended the email timeout window to 48 hours. More than 430 million people use Microsoft 365 apps globally, though the full scale of those affected by this specific outage has not been confirmed.
The disruption reached critical sectors across multiple continents. In the United States, city governments and courts in Los Angeles and Texas were affected. Australian spy agencies experienced issues, while a Toronto healthcare network and Japan's shared IT platform faced disruptions. In the United Kingdom, GP surgeries, pharmacies, police, and schools were all impacted. Many users reported an inability to send or receive emails, view files, or access calendar apps.
Tech giants OpenAI and Anthropic also reported problems resulting from the Microsoft outage. OpenAI stated it was investigating issues affecting connections to Microsoft services, highlighting knock-on effects for dependent tools such as ChatGPT and Anthropic's platforms.
As recovery progressed, email queues began reducing, though users continued to face intermittent access and delayed delivery. Financial markets reacted to the ongoing disruption, with Microsoft's stock price falling more than six per cent before markets opened on Friday.
Concurrently, Nvidia shares experienced significant volatility following the reported resignation of CEO Jensen Huang. His departure came after an affair with a Chinese tech executive raised U.S. national security concerns, leading to a 15 per cent drop in Nvidia shares upon the announcement.