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Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella arrives at the U.S. DIstrict Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco on June 28, 2023.

Philip Pacheco | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Microsoft and its current major acquisition target, video game publisher Activision Blizzard, have wrapped up their five days in court in San Francisco as the Federal Trade Commission sought to stop the deal from closing, but not without several fascinating facts coming to light.

And not only about games. Information on Microsoft’s business ambitions, its process for okaying acquisitions, and its most critical rivals in cybersecurity was revealed as part of the hearing process, thanks to documents and testimony from executives. Large releases like this don’t happen every day, and in the past several years Microsoft has avoided prominent trials that can result in several notable disclosures at once.

The FTC had originally planned to bring its case against the deal before an administrative law judge in August but then opted to seek a preliminary injunction in federal court as the agency became worried that Microsoft would try to close, even though some jurisdictions had not cleared the purchase.

In addition to regulators in the U.S. and the United Kingdom, Sony also opposes the deal. Its PlayStation 5 console competes with the Xbox Series S and X consoles, and the company has said that anticompetitive effects would arise if Microsoft were to take control of Activision Blizzard.

Here’s a rundown of notable facts that have trickled out in recent days and are still lingering after both parties presented their closing arguments on Thursday.

  • Mobile, mobile, mobile. The impulse to expand Microsoft’s gaming business on mobile devices at least in part inspired the Activision acquisition. “It was very imperative to us if we were going to remain [relevant and] grow relevance in the market, we were going to have to find mobile customers for Xbox,” Phil Spencer, Microsoft’s CEO of gaming, said last Friday. Revenue from mobile gaming is growing faster than revenue from gaming on PCs or consoles, and Microsoft executives repeatedly said in the hearings that the company has made little progress on building key mobile gaming content.
  • Several earlier mobile targets. Microsoft considered several other companies before choosing to buy Activision Blizzard, including FarmVille publisher Zynga, Pokemon Go developer Niantic and Japanese digital entertainment mainstays Sega Sammy and Square Enix, according to testimony and documents released in the case.
  • Interest in Asia. While Xbox consoles have a respectable market share in the U.S., they’re less popular in Japan, where Nintendo and Sony rule. A 2019 analysis Microsoft produced for a possible Square Enix bid said that “acquiring Square Enix would provide Gaming with market relevance in a region that currently lacks a meaningful Xbox presence, allowing us to reach more gamers in more geographies.”
  • Valuable incentives. Sony has paid game developers fees to discourage them from shipping games such as “Ghostwire: Tokyo” and “Deathloop” on Xbox, Microsoft executives said. Microsoft pays its own fees, and Spencer said that buying Activision Blizzard would mean Microsoft wouldn’t have to spend as much on incentives.
  • Many games under consideration. One of the more dramatic moments in the five days of hearings was when the FTC’s lead lawyer, James Weingarten, sought to push Spencer to make certain commitments on Microsoft’s part. Weingarten got Spencer to say he would not pull any future Call of Duty game from PlayStation consoles, a statement that was in keeping with what Microsoft has said for months. Then Weingarten went further, asking Spencer to do the same thing with all Activision content. Spencer did not immediately agree. Activision Blizzard publishes many other games besides Call of Duty, such as those in the Diablo and Overwatch franchises, but the bulk of the attention was on Call of Duty. Jim Ryan, CEO of Sony Interactive Entertainment, wasn’t happy with a Microsoft-generated list of Activision Blizzard games that would remain accessible on the PlayStation after the acquisition closes. “Overwatch is there, but Overwatch 2 is not on there, which is the current version of the game,” he said.
  • Microsoft’s long-range ambitions. The FTC managed to get ahold of documents Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent to top executives and fellow board members that laid out Microsoft’s financial goals for the current decade. The documents showed that Nadella is aiming for Microsoft to generate $500 billion by the 2030 fiscal year, with at least 10% year-over-year revenue growth. One document said Microsoft’s Security, Compliance, Identity and Management business could reach $100 billion in revenue by the 2030 fiscal year, while the company wants its Teams communication app to reach 1 billion monthly active users by then.
  • Weak hardware access. Spencer said during his testimony that Sony was reluctant to send Microsoft development kits for the PlayStation 5 before its 2020 release, and that prevented Microsoft from optimizing its Minecraft game for Sony’s current console. That put the game at a disadvantage compared with other developers, Spencer said. Ryan, from Sony, explained why his company provides development kits to Microsoft later than it does for other studios. “The commercial risks associated with this knowledge of those feature sets leaking to our principal competitor is not something that we would choose to rely on any contract to enforce,” Ryan said. Gamers can find an older version of Minecraft on the PlayStation 5.
  • Deal threshold. Amy Hood, Microsoft’s finance chief, said in written testimony for the hearing that she provides final approval for proposed deals under a certain dollar amount, but Microsoft’s board must sign off on deals valued above $500 million. Microsoft had $104 billion in cash and equivalents at the end of March, and 2022 revenue exceeded $204 billion.
  • Negotiating leverage. Microsoft was determined to ensure that Activision Blizzard’s Call of Duty games remain on Xbox for its current generation, which debuted in 2020. Bobby Kotick, Activision Blizzard’s CEO, conveyed that if Microsoft refused to provide a more favorable revenue share than the usual 70-30 split, then the games would not continue to be available, Microsoft executive Sarah Bond said. An FTC lawyer accidentally mentioned that Microsoft agreed to accept 20% instead of the typical 30%.
  • Sony’s altered expectations. In early 2022, two days after Microsoft announced its plan to buy Activision Blizzard, Ryan wrote in an email to another Sony Group executive that he was “pretty sure” Call of Duty would be available on PlayStation consoles for many years. But he appeared to lose confidence in that belief. In videotaped testimony, Ryan said he had “significant concerns” as to whether Call of Duty and other Activision Blizzard games would continue to be available on PlayStation after the transaction.
  • Kotick’s console mistake. Kotick has been in video games for decades, and he fumbled when he looked for the first time at the Nintendo Switch console and decided that it would not be successful. He had been more impressed with Nintendo’s earlier Wii console. The Switch became the third best-selling console of all time. When an FTC lawyer asked Kotick if Activision Blizzard would produce a Call of Duty game for a future Nintendo console, he said, “We missed out on the opportunity for the past generation of Switch, so I would like to think we would be able to do that, but we’d have to look.”
  • Game Pass opposition. Kotick made it clear that while Activision Blizzard has experimented with putting games in subscription libraries, he didn’t think they would lead to “sustainable long-term business.” He said he considered putting games on Game Pass in 2020 during negotiations with Microsoft over Activision Blizzard’s most recent licensing agreement, but ultimately the company decided not to go forward with it, he said. He couldn’t imagine anyone offering commercial terms that would be favorable, he said.
  • Whither Amazon? Weingarten pointed out that while Microsoft agreed to provide Call of Duty to small cloud gaming players such as Boosteroid and Ubitus, it has not done the same with Amazon, which fields the Luna cloud gaming service. Amazon is among Microsoft’s most prominent competitors in the cloud-computing business.
  • Cloud flop. Microsoft has sought to supplement PC and console gaming with a cloud-based streaming option, which is included with the Game Pass Ultimate service, along with a library of games to download and play for a monthly fee. Microsoft began testing cloud gaming with consumers in 2019. Bond testified that gamers mainly use the cloud option not with their phones but with their consoles, while they wait for downloads to finish. At that point, they switch to playing games locally, she said. The cloud gaming option is not growing and is unprofitable, Tim Stuart, finance chief for Microsoft’s Xbox division, said during his testimony. “The feedback to date is that it’s just not good enough as a — you know, definitely as a substitute to any of the current platforms,” Nadella said. “But you know, it can break through at some point, on something new, but it’s not yet happened, both on the economics as well as the content side.”
  • Sizing up cloud infrastructure. The big-picture memos from Nadella contained figures for the scale of various businesses across Microsoft, and one is more important than the others for the company’s investors. Perhaps the most closely tracked number in Microsoft’s earnings report after revenue and earnings is the growth of the Azure public cloud, because the software maker doesn’t disclose Azure revenue in dollars. One of the Nadella memos said Microsoft’s “infrastructure” revenue in the 2022 fiscal year was $34 billion. The tally was “very close to our estimates,” Bernstein Research analysts led by Mark Moerdler, with the equivalent of a buy rating on Microsoft stock, said in a Thursday note.
  • Critical security rivals. One of the documents that became publicly available as part of the hearing identified four security companies that Microsoft used to track its sprawling cybersecurity operation. The results contributed to a scorecard to assess performance among Microsoft’s top executives. Scorecard metrics included the percentage of “managed accounts with at least one Okta detection,” the percentage of “commercial Windows 10/11 MAD [monthly active devices] that have CrowdStrike components detected,” the percentage of “mail recipients that are protected by Proofpoint,” and percentage of “Commercial Windows 10/11 MAD that have Symantec DLP components detected.”
  • Exclusive exploration. Microsoft has argued that it would keep Call of Duty on PlayStation and make games in that franchise available on multiple cloud streaming services for a decade. “The acquisition’s strategic rationale and financial valuation are both aligned toward making Activision games more widely available, not less,” Hood said in written testimony. But on the fifth and final day of hearings, the FTC succeeded in getting witnesses to show that Microsoft did evaluate ways of trying to reduce the availability of Activision Blizzard content on the Sony PlayStation. Stuart confirmed that in preparation for a Microsoft board meeting, executives examined a scenario of lower sales of Activision Blizzard games on the PlayStation and ways of making up for the shortfall with sales of more Xbox consoles and Game Pass subscriptions.

Activision Blizzard and Microsoft have agreed to terminate the deal if it’s not done by July 18. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley said on Thursday that she isn’t sure when she’ll decide on the preliminary injunction. “But obviously, I’m mindful,” she said.

WATCH: Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to testify today

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick and Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella to testify today

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China’s CATL claims to beat BYD’s EV battery record with longer range on a 5-minute charge

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China’s CATL claims to beat BYD's EV battery record with longer range on a 5-minute charge

A CATL sign stands outside its research and development hub and the Chinese battery maker’s headquarters in Ningde, Fujian province, China November 8, 2024.

Kevin Krolicki | Reuters

China’s CATL, the world’s largest supplier of EV batteries, announced a set of new incoming products Monday, including a battery it claims has set a “new global record for superfast charging technology.”

In a post on WeChat, the company — Contemporary Amperex Technology Company Ltd. — said that its second-generation Shenxing battery could add 520 km (323 miles) of driving range from just five minutes of charging time— only slightly longer than it takes to refuel gas cars.

This appears to put CATL’s fast charging ahead of that of Chinese EV giant and Tesla rival BYD, which last month surprised the industry with a charging system it claimed could add about 400 km in range to its batteries also in about 5 minutes. 

Some analysts were skeptical about BYD’s claims, noting potential technical hurdles and high costs. However, if proved feasible on a larger scale, the tech could help the EV industry alleviate consumer concerns about electric vehicle range and convenience. 

CATL’s latest claims would also place its cutting-edge charging speeds comfortably ahead of those of its Western competitors. Tesla’s latest superchargers can add up to 270 kilometers of range in 15 minutes, while Mercedes-Benz Group recently said one of its batteries can recharge up to 325 kilometers within 10 minutes.

Won't be surprised China's IPO market has a relatively good year: China Renaissance

The new Shenxing product is also the world’s first lithium iron phosphate battery with both an 800 km range and a 12C peak charging rate, CATL said. It added that the battery outperforms the industry’s highest current charging level in low-temperature environments of -10°C.

On Monday, CATL also revealed new batteries within its “Naxtra” series, which it said would be “the world’s first mass produced sodium-ion battery,” reducing the EV industry’s reliance on lithium. 

The company added that sodium-ion batteries could help decrease maintenance costs and are capable of performing in extreme temperatures of -40°C to +70°C. 

One of the Naxtra batteries was specifically for heavy-duty trucks, which the company said offers over eight years of service life while providing reduced lifecycle costs and higher efficiency than traditional lead-acid batteries. 

Shenzhen-listed shares of CATL were trading up about 1% on Tuesday.

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Tesla shares tumble ahead of first-quarter earnings report

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Tesla shares tumble ahead of first-quarter earnings report

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attends a cabinet meeting held by U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House on March 24, 2025.

Win McNamee | Getty Images

Tesla shares fell almost 6% on Monday, a day ahead of the electric vehicle company’s first-quarter earnings report, as analysts fret over “ongoing brand erosion.”

The stock closed at $227.50 leaving it less than $6 above its low for the year on April 8. The shares are now down 44% for the year after wrapping up their worst quarter since 2022 in March. It’s the 12th time this year the stock has dropped by at least 5% in a single session.

CEO Elon Musk’s many distractions outside of Tesla, especially his role within the Trump administration, are in focus, along with the company’s progress on a long-delayed robotaxi and self-driving technology for its existing cars.

In the online forum that Tesla uses to solicit investor inquiries in advance of its earnings calls, more than 300 questions were submitted pertaining to Tesla’s self-driving systems, around 200 came in about the company’s Optimus humanoid robots in development, and more than 160 questions poured in about Musk individually. One investor asked, “What steps has the board of directors taken to mitigate the brand damage caused by Elon’s political activities?”

After spending $290 million to help return Trump to the White House, Musk is now leading an initiative to slash tens of thousands of federal jobs, sell off or end leases for federal office buildings, and reduce U.S. government capacity.

Musk’s politics and antics have elicited a massive backlash in Europe and parts of the U.S. This year, the company has been hit with waves of protests, boycotts and some criminal activity that targeted Tesla vehicles and facilities in response to Musk.

Earlier this month, Tesla reported 336,681 vehicle deliveries in the first quarter, a 13% decline from the same period a year earlier.

Tesla Q1 deliveries worse than expected

The company is expected to report revenue of $21.24 billion for the first quarter, according to LSEG, which would mark a slight drop from the same period last year. Analysts expect earnings per share of 40 cents. Investors will be paying particularly close attention to any commentary about Trump’s widespread tariffs and the potential impact on revenue and earnings as the year progresses.

Oppenheimer analysts wrote in a note out Monday that “ongoing brand erosion” for Tesla in the U.S. and Europe is weighing on sales already, but a “bigger issue for the company is potential weakness in China demand and margin impact due to the Trump tariffs.”

They wrote that competition in China, coupled with “nationalistic” consumer trends there, could “drive sales toward domestic brands.” Tesla would then have to export more of its China-made cars, which could lead to “downward pressure on pricing,” the Oppenheimer analysts said.

Caliber, a research firm that tracks how U.S. consumer sentiment is shifting around major brands, found that only 27% of its survey respondents in March would consider purchasing a Tesla, compared to 46% in January 2022.

Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives, a longtime Tesla bull, is hoping for a “turnaround vision” from Musk on Tuesday’s earnings call.

“Tesla has now unfortunately become a political symbol globally of the Trump Administration/DOGE,” he wrote, noting that “Tesla’s stock has been crushed since Trump stepped back into the White House.”

Ives estimated 15% to 20% “permanent demand destruction for future Tesla buyers due to the brand damage Musk has created” by working for Trump.

Late last week, Barclays maintained the equivalent of a sell rating and slashed its price target on Tesla to $275 from $325, citing a “confusing set-up” on the first-quarter with “weak fundamentals.” The firm said it could see a positive reaction if Musk is more focused on his automaker, and depending on what the company discloses about an anticipated “FSD event,” referring to Tesla’s Full Self-Driving offering.

Tesla said in announcing its reporting date that, in addition to earnings, it will provide a “live company update,” language the company hasn’t typically used in disclosures.

WATCH: Why investors are divided on Tesla’s turn to robots and self-driving cars

Why investors are divided on Tesla's turn to robots and self-driving cars

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Google says DOJ’s proposal for breakup would harm U.S. in ‘global race with China’

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Google says DOJ's proposal for breakup would harm U.S. in 'global race with China'

CEO of Alphabet and Google Sundar Pichai meets Polish Prime Minister at the Chancellery in Warsaw, Poland on March 29, 2022.

Mateusz Wlodarczyk | Nurphoto | Getty Images

As Google heads back to the courtroom Monday, the company is arguing that the U.S. needs the company in its full form to take on chief adversary China and uphold national security in the process.

The remedies trial in Washington, D.C., follows a judge’s ruling in August that Google has held a monopoly in its core market of internet search, the most-significant antitrust ruling in the tech industry since the case against Microsoft more than 20 years ago.

The Justice Department has called for Google to divest its Chrome browser unit and open its search data to rivals. Google said in a blog post on Monday that such a move is not in the best interest of the country as the global battle for supremacy in artificial intelligence rapidly intensifies. In the first paragraph of the post, Google named China’s DeepSeek as an emerging AI competitor.

The DOJ’s proposal would “hamstring how we develop AI, and have a government-appointed committee regulate the design and development of our products,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in the post. “That would hold back American innovation at a critical juncture. We’re in a fiercely competitive global race with China for the next generation of technology leadership, and Google is at the forefront of American companies making scientific and technological breakthroughs.”

Google is one of a number of U.S. tech companies trying to fend off the Trump administration’s antirust pursuits, most of which is held over from the Biden administration. Google lost a separate antitrust case last week, when a federal judge ruled Thursday that Google held illegal monopolies in online advertising markets due to its position between ad buyers and sellers.

Meta is currently in court against the Federal Trade Commission, which has alleged that the company monopolizes the social networking market and shouldn’t have been able to acquire Instagram and WhatsApp. Amazon also faces an FTC lawsuit for allegedly maintaining an illegal monopoly. And beyond antitrust, Trump’s FTC on Monday sued Uber, accusing the ride-hailing company of deceptive billing and cancellation practices tied to its subscription service.

It’s the type of enforcement actions the tech industry was hoping to avoid when President Trump took office in January. Google, Meta, Amazon and Uber — and top executives from some — publicly donated to Trump’s inaugural fund, part of a widespread corporate effort to cozy up to the incoming administration.

Fmr. DOJ antitrust chief: Antitrust enforcement is most important in times of tech inflection points

For Google, the search remedies trial will determine the consequences of the guilty verdict from August. The three-week trial will end on May 9. Judge Amit Mehta is expected to make his ruling in August, at which point Google plans to file an appeal.

“At trial we will show how DOJ’s unprecedented proposals go miles beyond the Court’s decision, and would hurt America’s consumers, economy, and technological leadership,” Mulholland wrote.

Google plans to argue that Chrome provides freedom. The browser helps people access the web, and its open source code is used by other companies. One of the DOJ’s proposals is that Google open its search data, such as search queries, clicks and results to other companies.

That would “introduce not just cybersecurity and even national security risks, but also increase the cost of your devices,” Google said.

A central part of Google”s challenge is to strike a balance between being seen as essential to American innovation, but not so essential that other companies can’t compete, particularly when it comes to AI.

Google will likely tout how it’s fueled AI innovation for years and will point to the “Transformers” research paper, which provided technical architecture used in AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity and Anthropic.

The DOJ has said that in search, “Google’s agreements continue to insulate Google’s monopoly.” The department plans to bring testimony from Nick Turley, ChatGPT’s head of product, and Perplexity Chief Business Officer Dmitry Shevelenko.

In a blog post on Monday, Perplexity said that “the remedy isn’t breakup,” but rather that consumers should have more choice. The company said phone makers should be able to offer their customers an assortment of search options “without fearing financial penalties or access restrictions.”

“Consumers deserve the best products, not just the ones that pay the most for placement,” Perplexity wrote. “This is the only remedy that ensures consumer choice can determine the winners.”

WATCH: Google, Meta fight antitrust cases in same courthouse

Google, Meta fight antitrust cases in same courthouse

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