The American software giant experienced a widespread outage on Thursday affecting its Microsoft 365 suite, depriving more than 130,000 users of access to their mailboxes and work tools. The repercussions extended to the systems of AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic.
It was a Thursday of major disruptions experienced by hundreds of thousands of American Microsoft users. The 365 office suite, which notably includes the Outlook mail service, the Teams communication app, and the Copilot AI assistant, suffered widespread failures in the afternoon, paralyzing both individuals and businesses.
Shortly after 7 p.m. (Paris time), the outage tracking site Downdetector recorded about 130,000 incident reports on Outlook. User reports varied: some could no longer send or receive emails, others were completely unable to access their mailboxes. However, the issue seemed to slightly ease by late afternoon, local time.
Microsoft publicly acknowledged the situation on the social network X, stating that users were « experiencing difficulties accessing Exchange Online mailboxes via multiple connection methods in the Americas. » The company specified that part of its infrastructure was under « high load, » likely causing the observed connectivity errors. « We are actively exploring all avenues to reduce the impact, » the company added.
The disruptions were not limited to Microsoft services alone. Microsoft 365 connectors used by AI companies OpenAI and Anthropic were also affected, with the latter reporting that their tools were not functioning normally. This serves as a reminder of the growing dependence of the global tech ecosystem on the infrastructures of major cloud providers.
Regarding Teams, Microsoft had announced earlier in the day that it had « successfully restored » access to the application after outage reports from North American users. Outlook mail remained at the center of ongoing difficulties.
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