Phil Spencer, CEO of Microsoft Gaming, is retiring, Satya Nadella has announced. Asha Sharma, the President of Microsoft’s CoreAI division is taking over Spencer’s role, while Sarah Bond, the current President of Xbox, is resigning.

“I am long on gaming and its role at the center of our consumer ambition, and as we look ahead, I’m excited to share that Asha Sharma will become Executive Vice President and CEO, Microsoft Gaming, reporting to me,” Nadella says. “Over the last two years at Microsoft, and previously as Chief Operating Officer at Instacart and a Vice President at Meta, Asha has helped build and scale services that reach billions of people and support thriving consumer and developer ecosystems. She brings deep experience building and growing platforms, aligning business models to long-term value, and operating at global scale, which will be critical in leading our gaming business into its next era of growth.”

In a thread on X, Spencer shared his thoughts on Sharma’s new position. “I’m excited for [Asha Sharma] as she steps into the CEO role,” Spencer wrote. “She’s joining an incredible group of people; teams full of talent, heart, and a deep commitment to the players they serve. Watching her lean in with curiosity and a real desire to strengthen the foundation we’ve built gives me confidence that our Xbox communities will be well supported in the years ahead.”

Alongside Sharma, Matt Booty, the current head of Xbox Game Studios, is getting promoted to Chief Content Officer, and will report to Sharma. Sarah Bond, who like Spencer served as a public face for the Xbox brand and was assumed to be his successor, is leaving Microsoft to “begin a new chapter.” Bond has yet to make a public statement about her resignation.

Spencer joined Microsoft in 1988, and has worked on Xbox since at least 2001. He assumed responsibility for Microsoft’s gaming brand and its various studios and associated subscription products in 2013, before becoming an Executive VP of Gaming in 2017 and later CEO of Microsoft Gaming in 2022. Spencer’s biggest impact on Xbox will likely be remembered as the creation of Game Pass, Microsoft’s “Netflix for Games” and the wave of studio acquisitions Microsoft completed from 2018 to 2022, which included smaller studios like Double Fine and the massive $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard King.

While Microsoft has plenty of developers and IP to fall back on, it’s struggled to compete with the likes of Sony and Nintendo during the current console generation. Microsoft’s gaming division has gone through widespread layoffs, its revenue continued to fall throughout 2025 and it raised the prices of both its consoles and Game Pass Ultimate, which likely won’t help things going forward. Sharma is in many ways inheriting a broken-down car.

As far as her plans go, Sharma’s email to staff that was included in Nadella’s announcement is light on details. Sharma says she plans to continue developing “great games,” wants to “recommit” to core Xbox fans and “invent new business models and new ways to play.” Whether that’s enough to turn Xbox’s fortunes around remains to be seen.

Update, February 20, 4:52PM ET: Added statement from Phil Spencer shared on X.

Scott Rogowsky is a comedian – he knows how to make fun of himself. That’s how he ended up roaming New York City Comic Con with his own photo printed out like a “Wanted” poster, filming himself asking strangers, “Have you seen this man?”

These passersby showed a flicker of recognition, looking at the tall, bearded man like someone they had known in a past life, but couldn’t quite place.

“You look familiar! Where do I know you from?” someone asks, as though Rogowsky could be a friend of a friend they had met at a party.

“I know your face,” another person says, staring thoughtfully at the 41-one-year-old.

A cosplayer dressed as a Ghostbuster finally figures it out.

“Did you used to do that game show online?” he asks. “Like, every night?”

Rogowsky was just poking fun at himself, embracing the persona of a washed-up internet sensation. “I know my place,” he tells TechCrunch. “I’m not walking around like everybody’s supposed to know who I am.” 

But seven years ago, everyone did. 

Rogowsky was once the face of HQ Trivia, an app that exploded into popular culture, then faded out of the public consciousness almost as fast. Between 2017 and 2019, Rogowsky hosted the live mobile game show twice a day. At its peak, it drew more than 2.4 million daily viewers each night. It garnered 20 million lifetime downloads.

Now thecomedian is back with an app of his own called Savvy, which shares a lot of the DNA of HQ. Savvy’s first game, TextSavvy, is a daily live game show where players can earn cash — only this time, viewers are competing against Rogowsky in a word puzzle game that’s something like a hybrid of The New York Times’ Wordle and Connections, rather than trivia. 

“I believe this is my calling in a weird way,” Rogowsky says. “I get up there in front of that camera, there’s thousands of people watching at home – millions, back in the HQ days – and it just flows.”

HQ Trivia was founded by the creators of Vine — the short-video platform that predated TikTok — and became a genuine cultural sensation. National news channels ran stories about office workers dropping everything in the middle of the day to play HQ at 3 p.m. It was groundbreaking – appointment entertainment in a new format for the streaming era – until the company imploded in a barrage of unfortunate circumstances. 

One founder, Colin Kroll, died of a drug overdose; the other founder, Rus Yusupov, was a divisive leader who clashed with his staff. He once threatened a journalist that he would fire Rogowsky if she published an interview with Rogowsky where he mentioned liking Sweetgreen salads (Yusupov apparently didn’t want to give the fast-food chain free publicity). Most of all, HQ Trivia fell victim to the same trap that dooms so many startups. The company had raised a $15 million funding round at a $100 million valuation, but it was – quite literally – giving away money, and it never developed a meaningful plan to monetize or build a sustainable business model. The company ultimately filed for bankruptcy in February 2020, with its demise later becoming fodder for dramatic documentaries and true-crime-adjacent podcasts dissecting how such a promising app failed so spectacularly.

This was, understandably, a real blow for Rogowsky. But more bad luck followed. A baseball superfan, Rogowsky had left HQ Trivia in 2019 for a job hosting a daily MLB Network show. He felt like he finally made it – he still lights up recalling running into Hall of Fame pitcher Pedro Martinez in the bathroom. But his show was cancelled when the pandemic shut down baseball. He tried a handful of times over the years to recreate a company like HQ, but it was a journey of false starts.

“Crazy s–t happened that I had no control over, and I felt like I was being tossed and turned on this raft in the ocean, just getting battered by things I can’t control, and that was sort of my attitude about life in general,” he says.

He considered himself retired from show business and opened a vintage store in California. But he missed comedy.

“I went through this very meaningful personal transformation in the last couple of years,” he said. That process culminated in a seven-day mountain retreat called “the Hoffman Process,” a program that he describes as a digital detox combining lessons in psychology and neuroscience that helped him “take control of [his] life again.”

“It gave me a lot of clarity to say, you know what, I have more to do here,” Rogowsky says. “I got out of that retreat and I was like, ‘I have something to say. People find me funny and entertaining. I find myself funny and entertaining.’”

People tuned into HQ Trivia for the prospect of winning a cash prize, but the odds of winning were slim. Millions of viewers came back each night because of Rogowsky’s quick wit and charm, which earned him a cult following of fans who still call him “Quiz Daddy.” 

“From the psychological, emotional side, I couldn’t really process what was going on,” Rogowsky says, reflecting on his viral fame. “And in the seven humbling years since, I have a vastly new perspective… I have my fanbase, I have my core followers right here. They’re on board with me, and it’s a matter of getting the word out.”

Rogowsky received a lot of messages over the years from people who wanted to help him build the next HQ. But last year, a direct message on X from European game designer Johan de Jager grabbed his attention. 

“The idea was the host plays against the audience, so it’s like a two-way interaction,” Rogowsky says. “Imagine HQ if I wasn’t just asking the questions but also answering [them]… That adds another layer to it that no one had thought of before.”

But in the age of AI, where players can easily look up answers, Rogowsky was skeptical that a trivia game could work fairly, so Savvy embraced word puzzles instead.

The most that Savvy has paid out in a single game is around $400 — small compared to HQ’s occasional six-figure prize pools. That’s because Rogowsky and his co-founders are funding the company themselves.

“Look, I know this isn’t the thousands of dollars that you saw on HQ, the hundreds of thousands that we eventually got to,” Rogowsky said on one recent TextSavvy broadcast. “But the difference is HQ was funded by venture capital. They had $8 million in the bank to start. They got another $15 million from other venture capitalists. We don’t got that… This is a low-budge operashe because I’m paying for it!”

Rogwosky says he has spoken with investors about Savvy and even gotten some enticing offers. But venture backing often comes with pressure on founders to maximize returns as fast as they can, a model that can set a business up to fail, as HQ demonstrated. 

“People want to 10x and 100x [their investment]… I’d be very happy to get to a point of profitability, to where we can just keep growing the company, keep hiring more people, keep making more games,” Rogowsky says. “I’m not looking for some type of eight-figure, nine-figure exit. This is what I want to do. I’m going to do this as long as I continue to wake up every morning and say, ‘Goddamn, I’m excited to get up there in front of that camera and have fun.’”

TextSavvy is currently running a “Season 0,” a soft launch that allows the team to work through technical kinks before formally launching on March 1. So far, without much promotion, TextSavvy has peaked at about 4,000 viewers in one night. 

That’s not much compared to the HQ days. Then again, when TechCrunch first wrote about HQ, the app only had about 3,300 concurrent viewers. Who’s to say Savvy can’t do it again?

“We’re not going anywhere this time,” Rogowsky said. “There’s no one to fire me. There’s no drama, there’s no tension. There’s not going to be a documentary about Savvy the way there was about HQ.”

The Government strategy has a renewed focus on improving Ireland’s SME involvement in Europe’s €95bn research and innovation programme.

Ireland’s Government has launched a “strengthened” version of the Horizon Europe Action Plan, Ireland’s gateway to a €95.5bn EU funding programme focused on research, innovation and investment to address global challenges for the years 2025 to 2027. 

The Action Plan, announced by the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science James Lawless, TD, will set out measures designed to build on Ireland’s performance in Horizon Europe. In September 2025, Ireland reached a milestone of €1bn in secured funding. 

Noting that Ireland’s higher educational institutions have performed strongly in Horizon Europe, Lawless is of the opinion that this success, which demonstrates scale of opportunity, can be replicated by the country’s small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). 

Commenting on the announcement, Lawless said it is important that “Ireland’s enterprise base, especially small and medium businesses, have the awareness, support and clear pathways to fully benefit from Horizon Europe”.

Core pillars

Looking ahead, the plan – which was developed with key research and innovation partners in the Horizon Europe focus group, including national support network members and higher education representatives – will focus on four core priorities.

The first of these is the further development of higher education institution engagement via tailored institutional supports, stronger post-award assistance efforts and enhanced alignment with research priorities.

The second is the enhancement of SME participation and performance through targeted engagement, improved visibility of financial support, and stronger links between SMEs, higher education institutions and research centres. 

The third priority is to encourage more Irish-led coordination roles, reducing administrative burdens, expanding mentoring and training, and strengthening incentives. 

Lastly is the aim of attracting and supporting newcomers, including early-career researchers and first-time applicants, through mentorship, developing networks and improving career sustainability supports.

Lawless said: “Ireland has already secured €1bn in Horizon Europe funding, with two years still remaining in the programme. This Action Plan will support both our higher education institutions and our small and medium‑sized enterprises to strengthen their participation, enhance performance and maximise the impact of EU research and innovation funding.

“The next phase of our national effort must see SME participation grow significantly. It is essential that Ireland’s enterprise base, particularly small and medium businesses, have the awareness, support and clear pathways to fully benefit from Horizon Europe. 

“Equally, our higher education institutions play a vital role in driving excellence, collaboration and innovation. This Action Plan commits to strengthening both, ensuring that Ireland’s research and enterprise communities succeed together.”

Earlier this month, it was discovered that, for the first time since 2018, annual venture capital funding into Irish technology SMEs fell, according to the Irish Venture Capital Association Venture Pulse report. 

The report, published in partnership with Irish law firm William Fry, indicated that funding in 2025 fell by 23pc to €1.1bn – a decline from 2024’s record €1.48bn. A total of 186 deals were completed in 2025, down from 217 in 2024 – a drop of 14pc.

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Apple’s latest iOS 26.4 public beta includes a cool new feature: the ability to chat with third-party AI like ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude right through CarPlay.

This is the first time Apple has opened up CarPlay to conversational AI, offering a neat way for drivers to get info and help on the go.

The update brings a new voice control screen to CarPlay, so these AI assistants can give you both spoken and visual answers. Basically, you can launch ChatGPT or Gemini, ask your question, and see the response on your dashboard. It’s a significant upgrade for CarPlay, though it does have a few caveats.

I never loved Horizon Worlds, Meta’s best attempt at creating a social universe for its VR headsets. In fact, I’ve completely avoided it. So I’m not at all surprised that Meta now says it’ll be refocusing Horizon Worlds on Roblox-like phone games. 

Is the metaverse dead? No, because the metaverse isn’t just Meta: It just co-opted the philosophical term. But the company’s biggest investment in virtual worlds has turned out to be a failure. And it’s just the “tip of the iceberg pivot” that Meta’s doing right now, as it tries to turn its VR efforts into a win with future AR glasses.

I’ve been somewhat stunned by Meta’s series of seemingly give-up-on-VR moves over the last few months, which included shutting down its best VR game studio acquisitions, killing off the best and most innovative VR fitness platform (also an acquisition), and ending attempts to make its VR ecosystem into a work software tool.

Meta’s new head of Reality Labs content, Samantha Kelly, admitted in a new blog post that VR hasn’t been the big seller Meta expected, echoing recent statements from Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth. Though VR headsets will still exist going forward, according to Meta, the company will lean on third-party apps and games to sell the headset instead. 

And now it’ll be moving away from trying to make Horizon Worlds happen as the centerpiece of Quest VR.

That’s a bit of a cosmic joke to me, considering that until now, Meta had wasted no effort in trying to bury game developers’ apps by spamming its OS with links to Horizon Worlds. Meta’s Quest app on phones became Horizon-branded and tried to hide app content in favor of weird Horizon Worlds social experiences, too.

While the Quest 3 and 3S are still the best-for-the-money VR headsets, I have no idea what the future holds for these systems. At every turn, I see Mark Zuckerberg and Meta declaring a full-on push to AI and smart glasses. Meanwhile, AI has barely surfaced inside Quest headsets in any meaningful way. 

Meta always had its VR ambitions split between everyday work and kid-focused gaming. It got the latter, not the former. It became a kid’s console, even though Meta tried to keep kids away. As a result, I don’t think anyone ever took the Quest seriously as anything you’d use for anything else other than games. Neither does Meta anymore, apparently.

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So now what, Meta?

Meta’s next steps look like they’ll still be focused on VR a bit, but I think it’ll be as a bridge to glasses. A smaller headset expected sometime in the next year could be more of an attempt to focus on portability and higher-resolution video to compete with display glasses, Apple’s Vision headset and the Samsung Galaxy XR (or even Valve’s upcoming Steam Frame). 

However, this shift might signal the end of subsidized gaming hardware, leading to higher prices. It could also mean Meta’s VR pivots toward showcasing immersive films and games rather than building an entire computing universe — or at least one requiring such extensive custom software.

As Meta keeps trying to make advanced AR glasses happen at some point down the road, its glasses are slowly adding displays and apps, but the software on Ray-Ban Displays is embryonic and primitive. It’s nothing like VR, and I have no idea when AR glasses will even get close. 

Meta’s moonshot, the AR glasses prototype Orion, needed a separate processing puck to work. That’s basically a similar idea to Xreal and Google’s upcoming Project Aura set of glasses, which also uses a puck. But the difference between Google and Meta is that Google plans to eventually put the processing on next-gen phones to run these AR glasses. Meta has no ability to do that, because it’s bottlenecked by Google and Apple.

And then what? Unlike Apple, Google and Samsung, Meta doesn’t have its own phone platform. Glasses are going to work with phones. That’s going to be Meta’s bottleneck, no matter how many times it tries to reshuffle its metaverse and device vision. VR headsets may have been a way to try to get around phones, but when it comes to glasses, it’s unavoidable. 

I don’t see how Horizon Worlds will ever be popular as another phone gaming app in a world dripping in Roblox-alikes. And as I said about Meta’s decision to destroy the fitness app Supernatural, what pieces does Meta have for its glasses push that are going to really be ready to compete with what Google, and likely Apple, are going to bring — fitness, app hook-ins, media, mapping, future car integrations and everything else? 

As Meta seems ever more ready to abandon so much of what it tried to build in VR, I wonder if it will realize that glasses just aren’t ready yet, app-wise, to pick up the journey on the other side. Even if the goal is to lean heavily on AI to do it.