Microsoft apologizes for global outage that disrupted services in 70 countries

Microsoft apologized Saturday for a global outage that disrupted its Teams, Outlook, and Copilot services for nearly 24 hours across more than 70 countries, saying services were gradually recovering. The company ruled out a cyberattack or AI-related issue as the cause. Microsoft attributed the disruption to a technical fault from an earlier network capacity upgrade that surfaced after a recent network change. The outage impacted customer support in India, with airlines IndiGo and Akasa Air reporting email delays, while Air India said flight operations were unaffected. Microsoft said it restored services gradually to validate infrastructure stability at each stage, which took longer but ensured a stable recovery. At the peak, Outlook generated over 130,000 problem reports on Downdetector, with disruptions affecting financial firms and other businesses globally.