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Microsoft’s rivals won a reprieve on Monday, when the software giant said it would split up its Teams and Office bundles following scrutiny from European regulators.

Zoom, whose video chat app took off during the Covid pandemic, has struggled of late to compete with Microsoft’s suite of communications products. Slack, now owned by Salesforce, has long pined for this type of split, submitting an antitrust complaint to the European Commission in 2020 over what it viewed as illegal tying of Teams into Office.

With Microsoft’s latest announcement, some customers will have to pay more money to get the same features. For example, new clients of Office 365 E3 will pay $3 more per person per month with the split than they would for the combined offering, according to a blog post and previous price lists.

Analysts at Mizuho Securities wrote in a note on Monday that “while customers believe Zoom is a superior platform vs. Teams” and other vendors, “the bundling of MS Teams to Office 365 has always been enticing for customers to consider Teams.”

Zoom’s revenue growth, which peaked at over 350% in 2020 and 2021, slowed to 2.6% in the latest quarter and has been in single digits for seven straight periods.

“In our view, the unbundling of MS Teams should help alleviate some enterprise churn headwinds,” wrote the Mizuho analysts, who recommend buying Zoom shares.

Organizations that already pay for the Microsoft bundle can keep using Teams and Office as is or, “if they wish to switch to the new lineup, they can do so on their contract anniversary or renewal,” the blog post said.

Last year, Microsoft generated almost $53 billion in revenue from Office, including Teams, up about 14% from 2022. CEO Satya Nadella told analysts on the company’s earnings call in October that Teams had over 320 million monthly active users.

Salesforce, which competes with Microsoft in a number of areas including communications and collaborations tools, acquired Slack in 2021 for $27 billion, its most expensive purchase since the company’s founding 25 years ago.

In July 2020, months before Salesforce announced the agreement, Slack filed a complaint about Microsoft in Europe.

“Microsoft is reverting to past behavior,” David Schellhase, Slack’s general counsel at the time, was quoted as saying in a press release, referring to the “browser wars” of the 1990s. “They created a weak, copycat product and tied it to their dominant Office product, force installing it and blocking its removal.”

The year prior, Slack wasn’t expressing much concerns about Teams. Slack founder and former CEO Stewart Butterfield said on an earnings call in December 2019 that while most of the company’s top customers used parts of Microsoft’s Office 365 suite, they were choosing slack for messaging instead of the Teams app.

Zoom’s stock slipped about 1% on Monday and Salesforce shares rose 0.4% A Zoom representative didn’t respond to a request for comment, while Salesforce declined to comment.

The Financial Times reported last year, citing unnamed individuals, that Microsoft would eventually let companies choose to buy productivity software subscriptions with or without Teams to head off a competition investigation from the European Union. Months later, the European Commission disclosed a probe into Microsoft’s Teams and Office bundling.

In response, Microsoft started selling distinct subscriptions for Teams and for other productivity software in 31 European countries.

“To ensure clarity for our customers, we are extending the steps we took last year to unbundle Teams from M365 and O365 in the European Economic Area and Switzerland to customers globally,” a Microsoft spokesperson told CNBC in an email. “Doing so also addresses feedback from the European Commission by providing multinational companies more flexibility when they want to standardize their purchasing across geographies.”

WATCH: How Microsoft has been dodging regulatory trouble amid broader big tech headwinds

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Intel’s new CEO receives $66 million in options and stock grants on top of $1 million salary

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Intel's new CEO receives  million in options and stock grants on top of  million salary

Intel appoints Lip-Bu Tan as CEO.

Courtesy: Intel

New Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan will receive total compensation of $1 million in salary and about $66 million in stock options and grants vesting over the coming years, according to filing on Friday with the SEC.

Tan was named as the chief of Intel this week, spurring hopes that the chip industry veteran can turn around the struggling company. Intel shares are up nearly 20% so far in 2025, and most of those gains came this week, following Tan’s appointment. He starts next week.

Tan will receive $1 million in salary, and he is eligible for an annual bonus worth $2 million.

He will also receive stock units in a long-term equity grant valued at $14.4 million, as well as a performance grant of $17 million in Intel shares. Both grants will vest over a period of five years, although Tan won’t earn any of those shares if Intel’s stock price drops over the next three years. He can earn more stock if the company’s share price outperforms the market.

Tan will receive a package of stock options worth $9.6 million, as well as a new hire option grant worth $25 million.

In total, Tan’s compensation package has about $66 million in long-term equity awards and options in addition to salary, bonuses, and legal expenses. If Intel goes through a change of control, Tan could be eligible for accelerated vesting, according to the filing.

“Lip-Bu’s compensation reflects his experience and credentials as an accomplished technology leader with deep industry experience and is market competitive,” Intel said in an emailed comment. “The vast majority of his compensation is equity-based and tied to long-term shareholder value creation.”

Separately, Tan agreed to purchase $25 million in Intel shares and hold them in order to be eligible for the grants and bonuses.

WATCH: Cramer on new Intel CEO

Jim Cramer talks impact of Intel's new CEO announcement

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Buy now, pay later lender Klarna files for U.S. IPO

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Buy now, pay later lender Klarna files for U.S. IPO

Pedestrians walk by an advertisement for Klarna.

Daniel Harvey Gonzalez | In Pictures via Getty Images

Klarna, a provider of buy now, pay later loans filed its IPO prospectus on Friday, and plans to go public on the New York Stock Exchange under ticker symbol KLAR.

Klarna, headquartered in Sweden, hasn’t yet disclosed the number of shares to be offered or the expected price range.

The decision to go public in the U.S. deals a significant blow to European stock exchanges, which have struggled to retain homegrown tech firms. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski had hinted for years that a U.S. listing was more likely, citing better visibility and regulatory advantages.

Klarna is continuing to rebuild after a dramatic downturn. Once a pandemic-era darling valued at $46 billion in a SoftBank-led funding round, Klarna saw its valuation slashed by 85% in 2022, plummeting to $6.7 billion in its most recent primary fundraising. However, analysts now estimate the company’s valuation in the $15 billion range, bolstered by its return to profitability in 2023.

Revenue last year increased 24% to $2.8 billion. The company’s operating loss was $121 million for the year, and adjusted operating profit was $181 million, swinging from a loss of $49 million a year earlier.

Founded in 2005, Klarna is best known for its buy now, pay later model, a service that allows consumers to split purchases into installments. The company competes with Affirm, which went public in 2021, and Afterpay, which Block acquired for $29 billion in early 2022. Klarna’s major shareholders include venture firms Sequoia Capital and Atomico, as well as SoftBank’s Vision Fund.

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Shares of DocuSign surge 14% on strong earnings, AI boost

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Shares of DocuSign surge 14% on strong earnings, AI boost

DocuSign CEO Allan Thygesen on Q4 results, launch of DocuSign IAM and growth outlook

Docusign rose more than 14% after reporting stronger-than-expected earnings after the bell Thursday.

“We’ve really stabilized and I think started to turn the corner on the core business,” CEO Allan Thygesen said Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.” “We’ve become much more efficient.”

Here’s how the company performed in the fourth quarter FY2025 compared to LSEG estimates:

  • Earnings per share: 86 cents vs. 85 cents expected
  • Revenue: $776 million vs. $761 million

The earnings beat was boosted in part by the electronic signature service’s new artificial intelligence-enabled content called Docusign IAM, a platform for optimizing processes involving agreements.

“It’s tremendously valuable,” Thygesen said. “It’s opening a treasure trove of data. … We’re seeing excellent pickup.”

Looking to fiscal year 2026, Thygesen said Docusign expects IAM to account for low double digits of the total growth of the business by Q4.

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Thygesen said the company is also partnering with Microsoft and Google, which the company does not view as competitors because they’re “not looking to become agreement management specialists.”

Despite consumer sentiment and demand dipping across the board due to tariff uncertainty, Thygesen said the company has not seen anything yet in its transactional activity to indicate a slowdown in demand or growth.

“More and more people are going to want to sign things electronically,” Thygesen said.

The company reported subscription revenue at $757 million, marking a 9% year-over-year increase. Docusign said it expects first-quarter revenue between $745 million and $749 million and projects full-year revenue between $3.129 billion and $3.141 billion.

Docusign reported net income of $83.50 million, or 39 cents per share, compared to net income of $27.24 million, or 13 cents per share, a year ago. Fourth-quarter revenue of $776 million was up 9% from the year-ago quarter.

DocuSign went public in 2018 at a $6 billion valuation. The company’s share price soared during the pandemic as demand for remote services boomed during lockdowns and social restrictions, hitting record highs in 2021 before plummeting. Thygesen, who previously worked at Google, joined the company in September 2022 after DocuSign’s massive slide.

The stock is down more than 16% year-to-date.

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