Microsoft hit with Spanish startups’ complaint over its cloud practices

Microsoft was hit with a Spanish startup group’s complaint about its cloud practices to the Spanish antitrust regulator on Tuesday, the latest grievance over its fast-growing cloud computing services and which followed a trade group’s EU complaint.

The US tech giant ranks second in the cloud computing sector, behind market leader Amazon but is expected to close the gap rapidly as a clutch of generative AI features powered by OpenAI’s technology attract business users.

The Spanish Startup Association, which represents more than 700 startups in Spain, cited a number of allegedly anti-competitive practices by Microsoft in recent years.