MS Under Antitrust Investigation by US Authorities
GM Loses 1 Trillion Won Investment Due to Robotaxi Suspension
Google Opposes MS's OpenAI Partnership
Microsoft (MS), which is undergoing an antitrust investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for the first time in over 30 years, is facing repeated setbacks. MS has incurred a loss of about 1 trillion won due to the suspension of the robo-taxi business by the automaker it invested in, General Motors (GM), while Google has requested the FTC to prevent MS from exclusively supplying AI products from ChatGPT developer OpenAI on its cloud platform.
According to major foreign media including MarketWatch on the 11th (local time), MS, which had invested in GM's robo-taxi business, suffered a loss of $800 million (about 1.14 trillion won) due to GM's suspension of the business. Earlier, GM announced on the 10th that it would stop funding its autonomous driving subsidiary Cruise.
MS had invested $2 billion in Cruise's robo-taxi business in cooperation with GM in January 2021. MS explained that the $800 million loss would negatively impact its earnings per share (EPS) by 9 cents in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025.
Last month, MS faced a crisis as the FTC launched an antitrust investigation into its business across the board, including cloud, software, cybersecurity, and AI. This is the first antitrust investigation into MS since the 1990s, when MS was investigated for holding 90% of the computer operating system (OS) market.
According to U.S. IT media The Information, the FTC sought opinions from Google, a competitor in the cloud platform market, to examine MS's business practices. Google reportedly requested the FTC to block MS from exclusively supplying OpenAI's AI products on its Azure cloud platform, arguing that it hinders fair market competition.
In the industry, there are concerns that OpenAI's influence is significant, as MS, which once lagged more than 20% behind market leader Amazon, has recently narrowed the gap to single digits and is closely pursuing it.
Because of this, there is analysis that the partnership between MS and OpenAI is facing a serious crisis. MS has become OpenAI's biggest ally by investing $13 billion from 2019 through last year.
President-elect Donald Trump nominated current FTC Commissioner Andrew Ferguson as the next FTC chairman, but the regulatory stance toward MS is expected to continue. Ferguson recently conveyed to Trump's transition team that "the FTC should continue to strongly investigate the market dominance of big tech platforms."
MS's stock price has fallen about 4% since reaching an all-time high in July.
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