Microsoft closes $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard after lengthy regulatory review
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft Corp., during the company’s Ignite Spotlight event in Seoul, Nov. 15, 2022.
SeongJoon Cho | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Microsoft has closed its $69 billion acquisition of video game publisher Activision Blizzard, according to a regulatory filing by the company Friday. It’s Microsoft’s largest deal in its 48-year history and comes after the company quelled concerns about competition from U.K. and European regulators and gained a favorable ruling from a U.S. district judge.
The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority gave its nod to the deal earlier Friday, clearing the way for the close.
The deal gives Microsoft a hefty portfolio of video game franchises, including Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot, Diablo, Overwatch, StarCraft, Tony Hawk Pro Skater and Warcraft. The game developer generated $7.5 billion in revenue in its latest fiscal year, a small fraction of the $212 billion in sales reeled in by Microsoft.
“Today we start the work to bring beloved Activision, Blizzard, and King franchises to Game Pass and other platforms,” Microsoft Gaming CEO Phil Spencer said in a blog post. “We’ll share more about when you can expect to play in the coming months.”
Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick will stay on as CEO through the end of the year.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who took the helm in 2014, is aiming to diversify the company’s business beyond its core areas such as operating systems and productivity software. Activision has been both a partner to Microsoft and a competitor. It’s one of the few large companies that releases popular games that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars to produce.
Regulatory pushback delayed the acquisition. When it announced the deal in January 2022, Microsoft said it expected to close the transaction by the end of June 2023. In July, the two companies agreed to extend the deadline to Oct. 18.
The Federal Trade Commission in the U.S., the European Commission and the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority all raised objections to the transaction.
Microsoft made concessions that placated European regulators. The company agreed to give consumers in the European Economic Area free licenses to stream their Activision Blizzard games, along with free licenses to streaming providers so European gamers can play the games through the cloud.
Microsoft signed agreements with console rivals Nintendo and Sony, promising them access to Call of Duty games for 10 years. And Microsoft made similar arrangements with cloud-gaming providers, including Boosteroid, Nvidia, Nware and Ubitus.
The FTC In July asked the San Francisco federal district court for a preliminary injunction to stop Microsoft and Activision from closing their deal before receiving full approval. But after five days of hearings, a judge sided with the two companies. The agency took the case to the U.S. Appeals Court for the 9th Circuit, which denied a motion to temporarily stop the consummation of the deal.
Satisfying U.K. officials was more complicated. In August, Microsoft said that, assuming the deal closed, game publisher Ubisoft would receive cloud streaming rights for Activision’s games for 15 years.
The FTC said Friday it still has concerns.
“We remain focused on the federal appeal process despite Microsoft and Activision closing their deal in advance of a scheduled December appeals court hearing,” FTC spokesperson Victoria Graham said. “Microsoft and Activision’s new agreement with Ubisoft presents a whole new facet to the merger that will affect American consumers, which the FTC will assess as part of its ongoing administrative proceeding. The FTC continues to believe this deal is a threat to competition.”
Activision ended the second quarter with $587 million in net income on $2.2 billion in revenue, which was up 34% year over year.
WATCH: Microsoft deal with Activision Blizzard set to clear final hurdle
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff speaks at the Dreamforce conference in San Francisco on Sept. 17, 2024.
David Paul Morris | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Salesforce is adding voice to its Agentforce software, letting clients go beyond text when using artificial intelligence agents to respond to customer questions.
With Agentforce Voice, companies can customize the tone and speed of voices and adjust the pronunciation of specific terms, Salesforce said Monday, ahead of its Dreamforce conference in San Francisco this week. The feature also allows people to interrupt the AI agent during phone calls.
Voice is becoming a bigger part of the generative AI boom, which started with text-based prompts in late 2022, when OpenAI launched ChatGPT. In the past year, OpenAI and Anthropic have enabled their chatbots to conduct spoken conversations without sounding overly robotic. Now that capability is taking hold inside business software.
Agentforce Voice will integrate with corporate phone systems from Amazon, Five9, Genesys, Nice and Ericsson’s Vonage.
Former Salesforce co-CEO Bret Taylor is also trying his hand in the market. Taylor helped start Sierra in 2023, and last year the startup announced that its AI agents “can now pick up the phone.” Sierra has been valued at $10 billion, and has a client list that includes ADT, SiriusXM and SoFi.
Salesforce has been under pressure this year in part due to investor concern that software companies could lose business as AI moves deeper into coding. The stock is down about 28% so far in 2025, while the Nasdaq has gained around 15% over that stretch.
Anthropic told reporters in September that its Claude Sonnet 4.5 model built a chat app similar to Salesforce’s Slack in 30 hours. In Salesforce’s latest earnings report, the company warned that new AI products “may disrupt workforce needs and negatively impact demand for our offerings.”
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has downplayed the risk to this company.
“When we get into this kind of zero-sum game, well, all this is going to get wiped out, or all this is going to change, then, you know, you’re not dealing with somebody who actually runs a company, because that’s not the way business works,” Benioff told CNBC’s Morgan Brennan last month. “Business is incremental, it’s evolutionary, it’s growing, it’s evolving, and we don’t see that kind of change.”
Salesforce launched Agentforce last year as a service that could respond to customer requests over text chats with help from generative AI models. Agentforce now has more than 12,000 implementations, according to a statement. But there’s some skepticism about its popularity.
“Investor enthusiasm around Agentforce has moderated as adoption has lagged expectations,” RBC Capital Markets analysts, who recommend holding the stock, wrote in a note to clients last week.
In November, Salesforce will provide early access to Agent Script software, which organizations can use to customize what agents say and do.
WATCH: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on what the market is getting wrong about AI
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