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California’s labor regulator on Tuesday said it fined Amazon nearly $6 million for violating a state law aimed at curtailing the use of onerous warehouse productivity quotas.

The California Labor Commissioner’s Office said it investigated two Amazon facilities in Moreno Valley and Redlands, both located east of Los Angeles, and found 59,017 violations of the state’s Warehouse Quotas law, officials said. Productivity quotas have become a common source of consternation among Amazon workers.

The Warehouse Quotas law went into effect in 2022 and requires employers to disclose productivity quotas to employees and government agencies, as well as any discipline workers may face for not meeting them. The law also prohibits employers from requiring warehouse employees to meet unsafe quotas preventing them from taking state-mandated meal and rest breaks or using the bathroom.

Amazon “failed to provide written notice of quotas,” the Labor Commissioner’s office said Tuesday. The company argued it doesn’t need quotas because it uses a “peer-to-peer evaluation system,” officials said.

“The peer-to-peer system that Amazon was using in these two warehouses is exactly the kind of system that the Warehouse Quotas law was put in place to prevent,” Labor Commissioner Lilia Garcia-Brower said in a statement.

Amazon has in recent years faced scrutiny over how it treats its warehouse and delivery employees. Regulators and critics have specifically zeroed in on the pace of work, arguing that the speed requirements put workers at greater risk of injury.

Washington safety regulators in 2022 fined Amazon for “willfully” violating workplace safety laws by requiring employees to work at such a fast pace that it put them at higher risk of musculoskeletal disorders or problems such as sprains and strains often caused by repetitive tasks.

The Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has also cited Amazon numerous times for safety violations. Amazon has said it would appeal all the citations.

States including New York, Washington and Minnesota have passed similar regulations, and a federal bill was introduced last month by Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass.

Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the U.S., has previously said it doesn’t use fixed quotas. Rather, the company said, it relies on “performance expectations” that factor in multiple indicators, such as how certain teams at a site are performing. It’s also disputed allegations that employees don’t get enough breaks.

Amazon has also defended its safety record. The company said in March that its injury rates have improved, and it announced plans to invest more than $750 million in safety initiatives this year.

Maureen Lynch Vogel, an Amazon spokesperson, said the company disagrees with the allegations and has filed an appeal.

“The truth is, we don’t have fixed quotas,” she wrote in an email. “At Amazon, individual performance is evaluated over a long period of time, in relation to how the entire site’s team is performing. Employees can – and are encouraged to – review their performance whenever they wish. They can always talk to a manager if they’re having trouble finding the information.”

WATCH: Amazon’s worker safety hazards come under fire from regulators and the DOJ

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Microsoft enters portable gaming with new ROG Xbox Ally devices

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Microsoft enters portable gaming with new ROG Xbox Ally devices

Microsoft ROG Xbox Ally and Ally X Handheld devices

Source: Xbox

Microsoft Xbox players will soon be able to take their favorite games anywhere with the launch of the new ROG Xbox Ally handhelds.

This is a first for Xbox, which has never released a handheld before.

The devices, developed in collaboration with ASUS, offer a full-screen Xbox experience meant for portable play.

Players will be able to access Xbox games, stream content, and play on the go with built-in support for cloud gaming.

“Players can look forward to an approachable gaming experience that travels with you wherever you go, featuring several new and first-of-their kind features on both devices,” Microsoft said in a press release.

The announcement follows last week’s debut of Nintendo‘s flagship Switch 2 and sets the stage for a new chapter in portable gaming.

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Vantage raises $820 million in a first-of-its-kind cloud and AI data center deal in Europe

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Vantage raises 0 million in a first-of-its-kind cloud and AI data center deal in Europe

U.S. data center operator Vantage has raised 720 million euros ($821.4 million) — the first of its kind deal in Europe.

The asset-backed securitization (ABS) deal, the first ever euro-denominated with data center assets on the continent, involves four data centers in Germany.

The company said it will be paying on average a 4.3% coupon on the bonds issued through the process.

In an ABS, Vantage raises money by using its data center infrastructure and future revenues from the facilities as collateral.

Vantage said it will use the funds primarily to pay off existing construction loans previously secured for the facilities.

“We believe the ABS market in particular is kind of best suited for our type of asset, which is real estate centric, high credit quality tenants, long term leases, something that is almost perfect for the ABS investor,” Sharif Metwalli, chief financial officer of Vantage Data Centers, told CNBC.

Vantage added that despite the large sum borrowed, the demand from investors exceeded the amount raised.

“So this transaction was actually pretty highly levered, frankly,” Rich Cosgray, senior vice president of global capital markets at Vantage Data Centers told CNBC. “It was higher leverage than our prior transaction and we had some investors that just weren’t comfortable at that leverage level.”

“Yet, despite that, we were basically two and four times oversubscribed on the respective financings, and we were able to tighten pricing pretty meaningfully through the marketing process,” Cosgray added.

The four facilities — two in Berlin and two in Frankfurt — have access to around 55 megawatts of power and “are fully leased to hyperscale customers,” the company said in a statement. The four facilities were valued at more than $1 billion earlier this year.

Last year, Vantage also raised £600 million through the first-ever securitization of a data center in Europe, the Middle East and Asia (EMEA). The deal involved two units from the company’s Cardiff campus with 148 megawatts of electricity power. Across the region, the company has 2,500 megawatts of data center capacity either operational or under development.

The transaction was led by Barclays Bank and Deutsche Bank as joint lead managers and Vantage was represented by the British law firm Clifford Chance.

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IonQ buys UK quantum startup Oxford Ionics for more than $1 billion

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IonQ buys UK quantum startup Oxford Ionics for more than  billion

Cheng Xin | Getty Images

IonQ is buying United Kingdom-based quantum computing startup Oxford Ionics in a deal valued at nearly $1.1 billion.

Shares gained about 4%.

The companies said in a release that the deal will combine IonQ’s quantum computing hardware and software knowledge with Oxford Ionics’ semiconductor chip technologies. The company aims to deliver breakthroughs in the field and capitalize on growing revenue opportunities.

“We believe the advantages of our combined technologies will set a new standard within quantum computing and deliver superior value for our customers through market-leading enterprise applications,” said IonQ CEO Niccolo De Masi in a release.

The deal, which is expected to close this year, includes $1.065 billion worth of IonQ shares and about $10 million in cash. The merged company expects to build systems with 256 qubits by 2026, over 10,000 by 2027 and 2 million by 2030.

Interest in quantum computing has skyrocketed in recent months after technology giants Microsoft and Alphabet announced new chip breakthroughs. Experts tout the technology’s ability to solve intricate computing tasks unachievable by other computers.

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IonQ’s CEO previously told CNBC that he wants the company to become the “800-pound gorilla” in the quantum world.

Shares of Maryland-based company, which went public through a special purpose acquisition company in late 2021, are down about 6% year to date. The stock has soared more than 400% from a year ago.

WATCH: IonQ CEO on earnings: Leading the world in ‘the quantum internet’

IonQ CEO on earnings: Leading the world in 'the quantum internet'

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