South Korea\'s second round of government support for graphics processing units has attracted five bidders, including first-round winner Naver Cloud and first-round loser Coupang, both re-entering. KT Cloud, Samsung SDS and Elice Group joined as new participants. The science ministry set evaluation criteria including economic feasibility, large scale, direct clustering, latest GPUs and service launch within the year. Officials plan evaluations and site inspections in April and May before selecting operators in May.

Microsoft beat expectations for its fiscal second-quarter results, helped by growth in its cloud computing business. Revenue for the quarter ended in December came to $81.3 billion, up 17 percent from a year earlier, the Wall Street Journal reported. Net profit was $38.5 billion, also above estimates, while operating profit rose 21 percent to $38.3 billion. Azure cloud computing grew 39 percent, in line with forecasts.