The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is moving forward with its investigation into Microsoft.

Initiated by President Joe Biden's administration, President Trump has decided to continue pursuing the antitrust probe.

As reported by Bloomberg, the investigation will look into allegations that Microsoft is abusing its market power through its licensing terms that prevent customers from moving to rival platforms.

The FTC has reportedly asked Microsoft for details about its data centers, for more information about the company's earlier claims that it is struggling to meet compute capacity needs, and information about expected licensing rule changes later this year.

In addition, Bloomberg said that Microsoft's decision to cut funding into its own AI projects after its deals with OpenAI is also under scrutiny, as well as its practices related to cybersecurity products.

DCD has reached out to Microsoft and the FTC for comment.

The investigation was approved by FTC chair Linda Khan prior to her departure when President Trump took office. She was replaced by Andrew Ferguson in January 2025, who stated his intention to ease scrutiny on business mergers and acquisitions but continue oversight of Big Tech platforms specifically to end what he described as a "vendetta against competition and free speech."

Despite this, the continuation of the FTC investigation has remained in question.

Elsewhere, Microsoft is under scrutiny by regulators including the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). An initial report from the CMA, released in late January 2025, found that both Microsoft and Amazon's AWS had been "generating sustained returns from their cloud services substantially above their cost of capital in cloud services for a number of years."

Microsoft submitted a rebuttal to these claims in late February, arguing that the regulatory body has not based its findings on "evidence" but instead using "hypothetical scenarios" and is "singling out" Microsoft. The CMA investigation remains ongoing.