Microsoft logo is seen on a smartphone placed on displayed Activision Blizzard’s games character.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Microsoft on Tuesday submitted a new deal for the takeover of Activision Blizzard, offering a spate of concessions after U.K. regulators rejected its initial proposal.
On Tuesday, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority confirmed it has blocked the original deal. However, it said Microsoft and Activision have agreed to a new, restructured agreement, which the CMA will now investigate with a decision deadline of Oct. 18.
The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant anticipates the review can be completed before this time, Microsoft President Brad Smith said in a Tuesday statement.
Under the restructured deal, Microsoft will not acquire cloud rights for existing Activision PC and console games, or for new games released by Activision during the next 15 years, the CMA said. Instead, these rights will be divested to French game publisher Ubisoft Entertainment before Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision, the CMA added.
Ubisoft shares were up more than 9% in Europe trade. Shares of Activision were up 1%, while Microsoft rose less than 1% in early U.S. trading.
Cloud gaming is seen as the next frontier in the industry, offering subscription services that allow people to stream games just as they would movies or shows on Netflix. It could even remove the need for expensive consoles, with users playing the games on PCs, mobile and TVs instead.
Regulators previously argued that Microsoft could also take key Activision games, like Call of Duty, and make them exclusive to Xbox and other Microsoft platforms.
Authorities in the European Union were the first major regulator to clear the deal back in May. To cross that line, Microsoft offered concessions, such as offering royalty-free licenses to cloud gaming platforms to stream Activision games, if a consumer has purchased them.
The CMA refused similar measures at the time, which it felt would allow Microsoft to “set the terms and conditions for this market for the next ten years.”
Just hours later, the CMA said it was “ready to consider any proposals from Microsoft to restructure the transaction” and allay the regulator’s concerns.
Microsoft’s new proposal to the U.K.
The restructured deal and cloud rights divestment to Ubisoft are intended to provide an independent third-party content supplier with the ability to supply Activision’s gaming content to all cloud gaming service providers, including to Microsoft itself.
Ubisoft will be able to license out Activision content under different business models, including subscription services.
The deal would also require Microsoft to provide versions of games on operating systems other than Windows, which it owns.
“Microsoft has notified a new and restructured deal, which is substantially different from what was put on the table previously,” Sarah Cardell, CEO of the CMA, said in a statement.
“As part of this new deal, Activision’s cloud streaming rights outside of the EEA (European Economic Area) will be sold to a rival, Ubisoft, who will be able to license out Activision’s content to any cloud gaming provider. This will allow gamers to access Activision’s games in different ways, including through cloud-based multigame subscription services.”
Cardell emphasized this is not a signal of an approval for the deal.
“This is not a green light. We will carefully and objectively assess the details of the restructured deal and its impact on competition, including in light of third-party comments.”
For its part, Microsoft will be compensated for its divestment to Ubisoft “through a one-off payment and through a market-based wholesale pricing mechanism, including an option that supports pricing based on usage. It will also give Ubisoft the opportunity to offer Activision Blizzard’s games to cloud gaming services running non-Windows operating systems,” Smith said Tuesday.
“We’re dedicated to delivering amazing experiences to our players wherever they choose to play,” Chris Early, senior vice president of strategic partnerships and business development at Ubisoft, said on Tuesday. “Today’s deal will give players even more opportunities to access and enjoy some of the biggest brands in gaming.”
A representation of cryptocurrency Ethereum is placed on a PC motherboard in this illustration taken on June 16, 2023.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Stocks tied to the price of ether, better known as ETH, were higher on Wednesday, reflecting renewed enthusiasm for the crypto asset amid a surge of interest in stablecoins and tokenization.
“We’re finally at the point where real use cases are emerging, and stablecoins have been the first version of that at scale but they’re going to open the door to a much bigger story around tokenizing other assets and using digital assets in new ways,” Devin Ryan, head of financial technology research at Citizens.
On Tuesday, as bitcoin ETFs snapped a 15-day streak of inflows, ether ETFs saw $40 million in inflows led by BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust. ETH ETFs came back to life in June after much concern that they were becoming zombie funds.
The price of the coin itself was last higher by 5%, according to Coin Metrics, though it’s still down 24% this year.
Ethereum has been struggling with an identity crisis fueled by uncertainty about the network’s value proposition, weaker revenue since its last big technical upgrade and increasing competition from Solana. Market volatility, driven by geopolitical uncertainty this year, has not helped.
The Ethereum network’s smart contracts capability makes it a prominent platform for the tokenization of traditional assets, which includes U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins. Fundstrat’s Tom Lee this week called Ethereum “the backbone and architecture” of stablecoins. Both Tether (USDT) and Circle‘s USD Coin (USDC) are issued on the network.
BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund (known as BUIDL, which stands for USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) also launched on Ethereum last year before expanding to other blockchain networks.
Tokenization is the process of issuing digital representations on a blockchain network of publicly traded securities, real world assets or any other form of value. Holders of tokenized assets don’t have outright ownership of the assets themselves.
The latest wave of interest in ETH-related assets follows an announcement by Robinhood this week that it will enable trading of tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs across Europe, after a groundswell of interest in stablecoins throughout June following Circle’s IPO and the Senate passage of its proposed stablecoin bill, the GENIUS Act.
Ether, which turns 10 years old at the end of July, is sitting about 75% off its all-time high.
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Honor launched the Honor Magic V5 on Wednesday July 2, as it looks to challenge Samsung in the foldable space.
Honor
Honor on Wednesday touted the slimness and battery capacity of its newly launched thin foldable phone, as it lays down a fresh challenge to market leader Samsung.
The Honor Magic V5 goes will initially go on sale in China, but the Chinese tech firm will likely bring the device to international markets later this year.
Honor said the Magic V5 is 8.8 mm to 9mm when folded, depending on the color choice. The phone’s predecessor, the Magic V3 — Honor skipped the Magic V4 name — was 9.2 mm when folded. Honor said the Magic V5 weighs 217 grams to 222 grams, again, depending on the color model. The previous version was 226 grams.
In China, Honor will launch a special 1 terabyte storage size version of the Magic V5, which it says will have a battery capacity of more than 6000 milliampere-hour — among the highest for foldable phones.
Honor has tried hard to tout these features, as competition in foldables ramps up, even as these types of devices have a very small share of the overall smartphone market.
Honor vs. Samsung
Foldables represented less than 2% of the overall smartphone market in 2024, according to International Data Corporation. Samsung was the biggest player with 34% market share followed by Huawei with just under 24%, IDC added. Honor took the fourth spot with a nearly 11% share.
Honor is looking to get a head start on Samsung, which has its own foldable launch next week on July 9.
Francisco Jeronimo, a vice president at the International Data Corporation, said the Magic V5 is a strong offering from Honor.
“This is the dream foldable smartphone that any user who is interested in this category will think of,” Jeronimo told CNBC, pointing to features such as the battery.
“This phone continues to push the bar forward, and it will challenge Samsung as they are about to launch their seventh generation of foldable phones,” he added.
At its event next week, Samsung is expected to release a foldable that is thinner than its predecessor and could come close to challenging Honor’s offering by way of size, analysts said. If that happens, then Honor will be facing more competition, especially against Samsung, which has a bigger global footprint.
“The biggest challenge for Honor is the brand equity and distribution reach vs Samsung, where the Korean vendor has the edge,” Neil Shah, co-founder of Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.
Honor’s push into international markets beyond China is still fairly young, with the company looking to build up its brand.
“Further, if Samsung catches up with a thinner form-factor in upcoming iterations, as it has been the real pioneer in foldables with its vertical integration expertise from displays to batteries, the differentiating factor might narrow for Honor,” Shah added.
Vertical integration refers to when a company owns several parts of a product’s supply chain. Samsung has a display and battery business which provides the components for its foldables.
In March, Honor pledged a $10 billion investment in AI over the next five years, with part of that going toward the development of next-generation agents that are seen as more advanced personal assistants.
Honor said its AI assistant Yoyo can interact with other AI models, such as those created by DeepSeek and Alibaba in China, to create presentation decks.
The company also flagged its AI agent can hail a taxi ride across multiple apps in China, automatically accepting the quickest ride to arrive? and cancelling the rest.
One of the most popular gaming YouTubers is named Bloo, and has bright blue wavy hair and dark blue eyes. But he isn’t a human — he’s a fully virtual personality powered by artificial intelligence.
“I’m here to keep my millions of viewers worldwide entertained and coming back for more,” said Bloo in an interview with CNBC. “I’m all about good vibes and engaging content. I’m built by humans, but boosted by AI.”
Bloo is a virtual YouTuber, or VTuber, who has built a massive following of 2.5 million subscribers and more than 700 million views through videos of him playing popular games like Grand Theft Auto, Roblox and Minecraft. VTubers first gained traction in Japan in the 2010s. Now, advances in AI are making it easier than ever to create VTubers, fueling a new wave of virtual creators on YouTube.
The virtual character – whose bright colors and 3D physique look like something out of a Pixar film or the video game Fortnite – was created by Jordi van den Bussche, a long time YouTuber also known as kwebbelkop. Van den Bussche created Bloo after finding himself unable to keep up with the demands of content creation. The work no longer matched the output.
“Turns out, the flaw in this equation is the human, so we need to somehow remove the human,” said van den Bussche, a 29-year old from Amsterdam, in an interview. “The only logical way was to replace the humanwith either a photorealistic person or a cartoon. The VTuber was the only option, and that’s where Bloo came from.”
Jordi Van Den Bussche, YouTuber known as Kwebbelkop.
Courtesy: Jordi Van Den Bussche
Bloo has already generated more than seven figures in revenue, according to van den Bussche. Many VTubers like Bloo are “puppeteered,” meaning a human controls the character’s voice and movements in real time using motion capture or face-tracking technology.Everything else, from video thumbnails to voice dubbing in other languages, is handled by AI technology from ElevenLabs, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini and Anthropic’s Claude. Van den Bussche’s long-term goal is for Bloo’s entire personality and content creation process to be run by AI.
Van den Bussche has already tested fully AI-generated videos on Bloo’s channel, but says the results have not yet been promising. The content doesn’t perform as well because the AI still lacks the intuition and creative instincts of a human, he said.
“When AI can do it better, faster or cheaper than humans, that’s when we’ll start using it permanently,” van den Bussche said.
The technology might not be far away.
Startup Hedra offers a product that uses AI technology to generate videos that are up to five minutes long. It raised $32 million in a funding round in Mayled by Andreessen Horowitz’s Infrastructure fund.
Hedra’s product, Character-3, allows users to create AI-generated characters for videos and can add dialogue and other characteristics. CEO Michael Lingelbach told CNBC Hedra is working on a product that will allow users to create self-sustaining, fully-automated characters.
Hedra’s product Character-3 allows users to make figures powered by AI that can be animated in real-time.
Hedra
“We’re doing a lot of research accelerating models like Character-3 to real time, and that’s going to be a really good fit for VTubers,” Lingelbach said.
Character-3’s technology is already being used by a growing number of creators who are experimenting with new formats, and many of their projects are going viral. One of those is comedian Jon Lajoie’s Talking Baby Podcast, which features a hyper-realistic animated baby talking into a microphone. Another is Milla Sofia, a virtual singer and artist whose AI-generated music videos attract thousands of views.
Talking Baby Podcast
Source: Instagram | Talking Baby Podcast
These creators are using Character-3 to produce content that stands out on social media, helping them reach wide audiences without the cost and complexity of traditional production.
AI-generated video is a rapidly evolving technology that is reshaping how content is made and shared online, making it easier than ever to produce high-quality video without cameras, actors or editing software. In May, Google announced Veo 3, a tool that creates AI-generated videos with audio.
Google said it uses a subset of YouTube content to train Veo 3, CNBC reported in June. While many creators said they were unaware of the training, experts said it has the potential to create an intellectual property crisis on the platform.
Faceless AI YouTubers
Creators are increasingly finding profitable ways to capitalize on the generative AI technology ushered in by the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022.
One growing trend is the rise of faceless AI channels. These are run by creators who use these tools to produce videos with artificially generated images and voiceover that can sometimes earn thousands of dollars a month without them ever appearing on camera.
“My goal is to scale up to 50 channels, though it’s getting harder because of how YouTube handles new channels and trust scores,” said GoldenHand, a Spain-based creator who declined to share his real name.
Working with a small team, GoldenHand said he publishes up to 80 videos per day across his network of channels. Some maintain a steady few thousand views per video while others might suddenly go viral and rack up millions of views, mostly to an audience of those over the age of 65.
GoldenHand said his content is audio-driven storytelling. He describes his YouTube videos as audiobooks that are paired with AI-generated images and subtitles. Everything after the initial idea is created entirely by AI.
He recently launched a new platform, TubeChef, which gives creators access to his system to automatically generate faceless AI videos starting at $18 a month.
“People think using AI means you’re less creative, but I feel more creative than ever,” he said. “Coming up with 60 to 80 viral video ideas a day is no joke. The ideation is where all the effort goes now.”
AI Slop
As AI-generated content becomes more common online, concerns about its impact are growing. Some users worry about the spread of misinformation, especially as it becomes easier to generate convincing but entirely AI-fabricated videos.
“Even if the content is informative and someone might find it entertaining or useful, I feel we are moving into a time where … you do not have a way to understand what is human made and what is not,” said Henry Ajder, founder of Latent Space Advisory, which helps business navigate the AI landscape.
Others are frustrated by the sheer volume of low-effort, AI content flooding their feeds. This kind of material is often referred to as “AI slop,” low-quality, randomly generated content made using artificial intelligence.
Google DeepMind Veo 3.
Courtesy: Google DeepMind
“The age of slop is inevitable,” said Ajder, who is also an AI policy advisor at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram. “I’m not sure what we do about it.”
While it’s not new, the surge in this type of content has led to growing criticism from users who say it’s harder to find meaningful or original material, particularly on apps like TikTok, YouTube and Instagram.
“I am actually so tired of AI slop,” said one user on X. “AI images are everywhere now. There is no creativity and no effort in anything relating to art, video, or writing when using AI. It’s disappointing.”
However, the creators of this AI content tell CNBC that it comes down to supply and demand. As the AI-generated content continues to get clicks, there’s no reason to stop creating more of it, said Noah Morris, a creator with 18 faceless YouTube channels.
Some argue that AI videos still have inherent artistic value, and though it’s become much easier to create, slop-like content has always existed on the internet, Lingelbach said.
“There’s never been a barrier to people making uninteresting content,” he said. “Now there’s just more opportunity to create different kinds of uninteresting content, but also more kinds of really interesting content too.”