Welcome to the Tech Beam Ride Home for Wednesday, July 12th,

23. I'm Brian McCullough today. A big win for Microsoft leads critics of

FTC Charleina Khan to come out of the woodwork.

Anthropic has released its Claude 2 chatbot.

Say hello to the Nothing Phone 2.

And while the market caps of the big players might have been boosted by AI, might the need for on-premises AI lead to a unique

opening for the likes of Dell and Hewlett Packard?

Here's what you miss today in the world of Tech. Big win for Microsoft yesterday. A US court denied the FTC's preliminary injunction bid to stop Microsoft's Activision deal as the FTC quote has not shown it is likely to

succeed in showing harm quoting c. n NBC this court's responsibility in this case is

narrow it is to decide if notwithstanding these

current circumstances the merger should be halted, perhaps even terminated, pending

resolution of the FTC administrative action. Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley wrote in her decision

published Tuesday. For the reasons explained, the court finds the FTC has not

shown a likelihood it will prevail on its claim. This particular vertical merger in the specific industry may

substantially lessen competition. To the contrary, the record evidence

points to more consumer access to call of duty and other activation content. The motion for a preliminary

injunction is therefore denied."

The decision comes after five days of court hearings to assess whether Microsoft would be able

to complete the 68.7 billion dollar Activision

Blizzard acquisition it announced in 2022.

The judge was deciding whether to grant the FTC's request for an emergency injunction

to prevent the deal from closing.

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