The middle of the week came with news for Microsoft. The US Army announced that the tech behemoth had won a contract to provide augmented reality headsets.
Given that the US Army needs more than 120,000 headsets, the contract could be worth up to $21.9 billion over ten years. Alex Kipman, a Microsoft Technical fellow, stated that the headsets are meant to deliver "enhanced situational awareness, enabling information sharing and decision-making in a variety of scenarios."
This is not the first time when Microsoft does business with entities linked to the US Army. It won a $10 billion contract with the Pentagon for JEDI cloud computing, but the contract is disputed in court with Amazon.com. According to Pentagon officials, the Defense Department might drop the contract if the dispute lingers in the courts.
Microsoft's latest contract sparked some controversies. Some Microsoft employees wrote an open letter in which they stated: "We did not sign up to develop weapons, and we demand a say in how our work is used."
Following this piece of news, Microsoft stock price gained 1.7%.
Sources: reuters.com, cnbc.com