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Ofcom said it received evidence showing Microsoft makes it less attractive for customers to run its Office productivity apps on cloud infrastructure other than Microsoft Azure.

Igor Golovniov | Sopa Images | Lightrocket via Getty Images

LONDON — Britain’s competition regulator is preparing remedies aimed at solving competition issues in the multibillion-pound cloud computing industry.

The Competition and Markets Authority is set to unveil its provisional decision detailing “behavioral” remedies addressing anti-competitive practices in the sector following a months-long investigation into the market, two sources familiar with the matter told CNBC.

The sources, who preferred to remain anonymous given the investigation’s sensitive nature, said that the cloud market remedies could be announced within the next two weeks. The regulator previously set itself a deadline of November to December 2024 to publish its provisional decision.

A CMA spokesperson declined to comment on the timing of its provisional decision when asked by CNBC.

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Cloud infrastructure services is a market that’s dominated by U.S. technology giants Amazon and Microsoft. Amazon is the largest player in the market, offering cloud services via its Amazon Web Services (AWS) arm. Microsoft is the second-largest provider, selling cloud products under its Microsoft Azure unit.

The CMA probe traces its history back to 2022, when U.K. telecoms regulator Ofcom kicked off a market study examining the dominance of cloud giants Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Ofcom subsequently referred its cloud review to the CMA to address competition issues in the market.

Why is the CMA concerned?

Among the key issues the CMA is expected to address with recommended behavioral remedies, are so-called “egress” fees charging companies for transferring data from one cloud to another, licensing fees viewed as unfair, volume discounts, and interoperability issues that make it harder to switch vendor.

According to one of the sources, there’s a chance Google may be excluded from the scope of the competition remedies given it is smaller in size compared to market leaders AWS and Microsoft Azure.

Amazon and Microsoft declined to comment on this story when contacted by CNBC. Google did not immediately return a request for comment.

What could the remedies look like?

The CMA has said previously in June that it was more minded toward considering behavioral remedies to resolve its concerns as opposed to “structural” remedies, such as ordering divestments or operational separations.

The watchdog said in a working paper in June that it was “at an early stage” of considering potential remedies.

Solutions floated at the time included imposing price controls restricting the level of egress fees, lowering technical barriers to switching cloud providers, and banning agreements encouraging firms to commit more spend in return for discounts.

One contentious measure the regulator said it was considering was requiring Microsoft to apply the same pricing for its productivity software products regardless of which cloud they’re hosted on — a move that would have a significant impact on Microsoft’s pricing structures.

CMA Chief Executive Sarah Cardell is set to hold a speech on Thursday at Chatham House, a U.K. policy institute. In an interview with the Financial Times, she defended the regulator’s track record on competition enforcement amid criticisms from Prime Minister Keir Starmer that the agency was holding back growth.

She is expected to outline plans for a review in 2025 into whether the CMA should more frequently use behavioral remedies when approving deals, the FT reported.

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Brad Gerstner on OpenAI’s dealmaking with AMD, Nvidia: ‘The best chips will win’

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Brad Gerstner on OpenAI's dealmaking with AMD, Nvidia: 'The best chips will win'

Brad Gerstner, Altimeter Founder and CEO, speaks at the Delivering Alpha conference in New York City on Sept. 28, 2023.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Investor Brad Gerstner cautioned Monday that OpenAI‘s deals with Nvidia and AMD are purely announcements, not deployments.

“Now we will see what gets delivered,” the Altimeter Capital founder told CNBC. “Ultimately, the best chips will win.”

OpenAI’s megadeal with AMD and its relentless push to expand artificial intelligence capabilities underscores the intensifying competitive landscape.

Gerstner said the deals provide “more evidence that the world will remain compute-constrained despite best efforts to bring massive supply online.”

Read more CNBC tech news

Experts say it’s also another validation of the AI arms race heating up, with AI a key element in the geopolitical race between the U.S. and China.

OpenAI’s Chinese rival DeepSeek sent shockwaves last year when it claimed to have a lower-cost AI model than its U.S. peer. And Deepseek has continued to innovate, delivering new open-sourced models using domestically made AI chips.

Last week, the U.S. government issued a report warning of DeepSeek’s national security concerns, Axios reported.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation said DeepSeek provides Chinese Communist Party views more frequently than U.S. models, according to Axios.

OpenAI’s partnership with AMD is raising hopes that it is taking the right steps to increase production and build more complex AI models.

“What we’re really seeing is a world where there’s going to be absolute compute scarcity, because there’s going to be so much demand for AI services, and not just from OpenAI, really from the whole ecosystem,” OpenAI President told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” Monday. “And so that’s why it’s just so important for this whole industry to come together.”

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AppLovin stock tanks on report SEC is investigating company over data-collection practices

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AppLovin stock tanks on report SEC is investigating company over data-collection practices

The AppLovin logo arranged on a smartphone in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025.

Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images

AppLovin shares plummeted on Monday after Bloomberg reported that the SEC has been probing the mobile advertising company over its data-collection practices.

The agency has been looking into whether the company violated agreements on pushing targeted ads to consumers, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The report said that the SEC is responding to a whistleblower complained filed this year along with multiple short-seller reports, and added that neither the company nor its officials have been accused of wrongdoing.

An AppLovin spokesperson said the company doesn’t typically comment on the “existence or non-existence” of regulatory matters.

“That said, as a global public company, we regularly engage with regulators and if we get inquiries we address them in the ordinary course,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “Material developments, if any, would be disclosed through the appropriate public channels.”

The stock dropped 14% in regular trading after the report, which landed shortly before market close. It fell another 5% in extended trading.

AppLovin’s stock has been on a tear, jumping about 80% this year after soaring more than 700% in 2024. The surge has been driven by the company’s artificial intelligence technology that’s allowed it to provide better ad targeting capabilities to brands.

Last month, AppLovin was added to the S&P 500, replacing MarketAxess Holdings, at the same time that Robinhood joined the index in place of Caesars Entertainment.

AppLovin made the move into the benchmark despite a short-seller’s effort to keep it out.

In March, Fuzzy Panda Research advised the committee for the large-cap U.S. index to keep AppLovin from becoming a constituent. AppLovin shares dropped 15% in December, when the committee picked Workday to join the S&P 500.

Three notable short-seller firms, including Fuzzy Panda, have slammed AppLovin of late. The latest was Muddy Waters Research, which in March said the company’s ad tactics “systematically” violate app stores’ terms of service by “impermissibly extracting proprietary IDs from MetaSnap, TikTok, Reddit, Google, and others.” In so doing, AppLovin is funneling targeted ads to users without their consent, Muddy Waters said.

Fuzzy Panda and Culper Research put out reports the prior month, taking aim at AppLovin’s AXON software, which drove its earnings growth and stock surge. The shares dropped 12% on Feb. 26, the day of the short reports.

After those reports were published, AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi wrote a blog post, defending his company’s technology and practices, and taking aim at the short sellers trying to profit from AppLovin’s decline.

WATCH: AppLovin CEO on company’s bid to buy TikTok

AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi on its bid to buy TikTok

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Figma’s stock pops 7% after OpenAI CEO Altman touts ChatGPT integration

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Figma's stock pops 7% after OpenAI CEO Altman touts ChatGPT integration

Figma signage appears at the New York Stock Exchange in New York as the company prepares for its shares to begin trading on July 31, 2025.

Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Figma shares jumped 7% on Monday after the design software vendor’s technology was promoted by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in an onstage demo at his company’s annual DevDay conference in San Francisco.

Altman discussed Figma’s integration into ChatGPT, which has more than 800 million monthly users. He showed how third-party applications could plug in with OpenAI’s Apps SDK, or software development framework.

“When someone’s using ChatGPT, you’ll be able to find an app by asking for it by name,” Altman said. “For example, you could sketch out a product flow for ChatGPT and then say, Figma, turn this sketch into a workable diagram. The Figma app will take over respond and complete the action.”

In addition to asking for Figma’s help by name in ChatGPT, the assistant can also suggest Figma when it’s relevant, Figma product manager Luke Zhang said in a blog post.

The rally for Figma, at its high point, was the steepest since the day of the company’s public market debut on the New York Stock Exchange in July.

Figma has been ramping up its own tools for working on app and website designs using generative AI models from OpenAI and other providers.

Subscribers to products that connect to the Apps SDK will be able to log in without leaving their ChatGPT conversations, Altman said. He said people working on products in Figma can also launch the FigJam tool to keep working on development ideas. Apps SDK is based on the Model Context Protocol, an open standard that OpenAI rival Anthropic introduced last year.

Software developers will be able to submit apps for review later in 2025, Altman said.

Over time, OpenAI will offer many ways to generate revenue through third-party integrations, Altman said. Last week, OpenAI announced a feature allowing people to buy products listed on Etsy through ChatGPT.

WATCH: Figma shares slide on revenue growth rate outlook

Figma shares slide on revenue growth rate outlook

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