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U.S. tech giant Microsoft on Thursday said it will unbundle its chat and videoconference service Teams from its Microsoft 365 productivity suite, in a bid to allay European Union antitrust concerns.

Starting Oct. 1 this year, Microsoft will sell the packages without Teams at a discounted price totaling a 24 euro ($26) per year reduction in the EEA (European Economic Area) and Swiss regions. Existing customers who already own a suite with Teams can choose to stay with their current package or migrate to a product without the videoconferencing app.

The subscription-based Microsoft 365 bundle, formerly known as Office 365, previously prized Teams as the crown jewel of its workplace-geared app offerings, which include Word and Excel. The Teams software debuted in 2017 and gained ground with users as it facilitated workplace text and video communication during the Covid-19 pandemic. Microsoft in March said it intended to roll out a new version of Teams that will be twice as fast as its predecessor.

European Union regulators had in July opened an antitrust investigation into Microsoft’s bundling of Teams with other Office products, citing anti-competitive concerns.

The probe, which is ongoing, marked the first EU antitrust investigation into Microsoft in over a decade, with a Salesforce-owned Teams rival Slack submitting a complaint to European authorities on competitiveness grounds in 2020. Salesforce did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.

EU officials expressed concern that the Redmond tech titan “may grant Teams a distribution advantage by not giving customers the choice on whether or not to include access to that product when they subscribe to their productivity suites and may have limited the interoperability between its productivity suites and competing offerings.”

Microsoft on Thursday pledged to also enhance resources on interoperability with Microsoft 365 and Office 365. It will also create mechanisms to host Office web applications within competing apps and services.

“We appreciate the clarity that has emerged on several of the concerns from extensive and constructive discussions with the European Commission. With the benefit of this clarity, we believe it is important that we start to take meaningful steps to address those concerns,” Nanna-Louise Linde, vice president of Microsoft European Government Affairs, said Thursday in a blog post.

“We believe these changes balance the interests of our competitors with those of European business customers, providing them with access to the best possible solutions at competitive prices,” she added, recognizing that the EU investigation is currently in its early stages.

An EU spokesperson told CNBC: “We take note of Microsoft’s announcement. We have no further comment to make.”

Microsoft is separately in the crosshairs of U.K. regulators, which blocked its original plans to take over gaming company Activision Blizzard on concerns of stifling competition in the nascent cloud gaming market. Microsoft last week submitted a new deal proposal for the acquisition, offering fresh concessions — which the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority will now study with a decision deadline of Oct. 18.

— CNBC’s Silvia Amaro contributed to this report

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Fentanyl, ICE and popcorn: Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s earnings call commentary

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Fentanyl, ICE and popcorn: Palantir CEO Alex Karp's earnings call commentary

Alex Karp, Palantir CEO, joins CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street’ on June 5, 2025.

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Palantir CEO Alex Karp took on a familiar target during the company’s earnings call on Monday: His critics.

“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said, after the data analytics company reported better-than-expected third-quarter results. “Enjoy, get some popcorn, they’re crying. We are every day making this company better and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”

Palantir shares are up 25-fold in the past three years, lifting its market cap to over $490 billion and a forward price-to-earnings ratio of almost 280. The stock slipped in extended trading despite the earnings beat and upbeat guidance.

Karp, who co-founded the company in 2003, said Palantir is “going to go very, very deep on our rightness” because it is “exceedingly good for America.”

The eccentric and outspoken CEO has gained a reputation over the years for his colorful — and oftentimes political — commentary in interviews, shareholder letters and on earnings calls. His essay-like quarterly letters have previously quoted famous philosophers, the New Testament and President Richard Nixon.

In Monday’s letter, Karp quoted 20th-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats and argued for a shared “national experience.” He wrote that rejecting a “shared and defined sense of common culture” poses significant drawbacks.

It’s “that pursuit of something greater, and rejection of a vacant and neutered and hollow pluralism, that will help ensure our continued strength and survival,” he wrote.

On the call, Karp pivoted from a discussion of artificial intelligence adoption to fentanyl overdoses in America, a topic he described as “slightly political.”

“I want people to remember if fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale grads instead of 60,000 working class people, we would be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever was sending it from South America,” he said.

Karp also commented on the company’s deals with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Israeli military. Earlier this year, Palantir won a $30 million deal to build ImmigrationOS for ICE, providing data on the identification and deportation of immigrants.

In 2023, Karp had a message for people in the tech industry who have misgivings about his company’s dealings with intelligence agencies and the military.

“You may not agree with that and, bless you, don’t work here,” Karp said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Palantir, which gets more than half its U.S. revenue from the government, also provided tools to Israel after the deadly Oct. 7 attack by militant group Hamas. In recent years, both Karp and the company have undertaken a fiercely pro-Israel stance.

Following the Oct. 7 attack, Palantir took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, saying it “stands with Israel” and held its first board meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, a few months later. Karp has said the company has lost employees due to his staunch Israel stance, and he expects more to leave.

“We’re on the front line of all adversaries, including vis-à-vis China, we’re on ICE and we’ve supported Israel,” he said on the earnings call. “I don’t know why this is all controversial, but many people find that controversial.”

WATCH: Stocks like Palantir and Mag 7 are not ‘unique’ to the market, says Richard Bernstein

Stocks like Palantir and Mag 7 are not 'unique' to the market, says Richard Bernstein

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CNBC Daily Open: Outside AI, the market isn’t looking that hot

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CNBC Daily Open: Outside AI, the market isn't looking that hot

CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images

The “everything store” might have secured its biggest customer yet.

On Monday, Amazon announced that it had signed a $38 billion deal with OpenAI, offering the ChatGPT maker access to Amazon Web Services’ infrastructure.

On the one hand, the move isn’t too surprising — a continuation of OpenAI’s spending spree as it looks to secure resources to run its power-hungry artificial intelligence models.

On the other, OpenAI’s turn to Amazon shows that the firm is diversifying from its reliance on Microsoft, which had been its exclusive cloud services provider until this year. That could suggest OpenAI is getting ready for an initial public offering as it looks to signal “both independence and operational maturity,” as CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos writes.

Amazon shares surged on the news to close at a record high. Nvidia also had a positive day after Microsoft announced it was granted a license by the U.S. government to export the AI darling’s chips to the United Arab Emirates.

While Big Tech is attracting investor interest, the rest of the market has been rather lackluster.

Even as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose on the back of the tech behemoths, more than 300 stocks in the broad-based index ended the day lower — a warning sign that only a narrow segment of the market is faring well.

What you need to know today

Palantir’s third-quarter results beat estimates. The company foresees revenue of around $1.33 billion for the current quarter, outstripping the $1.19 billion expected by analysts, according to LSEG. Shares, however, fell 4.3% in extended trading on Monday evening stateside.

OpenAI signs a $38 billion deal with Amazon. Under the agreement, OpenAI will immediately begin running artificial intelligence processes on Amazon Web Services, harnessing Nvidia’s AI chips. Amazon shares popped 4% and closed at a record.

Microsoft gets approval to ship Nvidia chips to UAE. The U.S. Commerce Department license, granted in September, allows Microsoft to ship 60,400 additional A100 chips, involving Nvidia’s advanced GB300 graphics processing units. Shares of Nvidia rose 2.2%.

U.S. markets mostly rise. On Monday stateside, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite advanced, boosted by tech shares. The pan-European Stoxx 600 ended flat. Auto stocks including Renault and Volkswagen rose.

[PRO] Growing risks to global equities. European stock markets hit highs last week. But there are several factors that might derail this upward trajectory, analysts say.

And finally…

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 13, 2025.

Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images

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Why Jim Cramer wants to load up on more shares of this DuPont spinoff

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Why Jim Cramer wants to load up on more shares of this DuPont spinoff

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