Microsoft Pulls Teams from Office Amidst EU Probe; AI21 Labs Secures Funding from Google, Nvidia

In today's ExchangeWire news digest: Microsoft unbundles Teams from Office; Israel's AI21 Labs raises £122m in a series C funding round; and Klarna reports it turned a profit in May this year.

Microsoft to cut Teams out of Office

Microsoft has stated it will unbundle Teams from its Office product, saying it will make it easier for competing products to work with its software. Rivals, however, have suggested that Microsoft is attempting to stave off regulators. The move comes a month after the European Commission launched a probe into Microsoft’s integration of Teams into Office.

AI start-up AI21 Labs surpasses $1bn valuation

Israel’s AI21 Labs has raised USD$155m (~£122m) in a series C round, including investments from Google, Nvidia, and Samsung Next. The OpenAI rival, which builds AI systems for natural language, is now valued at USD$1.4bn (~£1.1bn).

Klarna reports first profitable month in three years

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) firm Klarna has reported it turned a profit in May of this year, marking its first profitable month in a three-year period. The Swedish company has struggled against reduced consumer confidence and debt in recent years, however CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said the results show Klarna’s business model is “incredibly agile and sustainable”.

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Fact of the Day

150 million – the size of Klarna's global customer base.

Source: Statista

Last Week's Tech Teasers

Following our exploration of their potential future, Friday’s tech teasers tested your knowledge of ad networks. Check out the answers below to see how you did!

• 68% – the percentage of profits Amazon’s retail media network generates ?
• 3 years – the amount of time Google may have lied about in-stream ads ?
• +29 million – the forecast number of Walmart+ members this year ??‍?‍??
• Australia – the home of the broadcasters working on an ad network to rival YouTube ?
• Roblox – the gaming giant which launched an ad network earlier this year ?️

Challenge yourself on ad tech, martech, media, and commerce, by signing up to The Stack, where we publish a new quiz every Friday.