Microsoft’s Japan chief stresses compliance with antitrust probe

Published Thu, Feb 26, 2026 · 09:23 PM

[TOKYO] Microsoft Corp is compliant with Japan’s antitrust watchdog and its inquiry, the chief of its local unit said, as the company fields an investigation over possible anti-competitive practices involving the Azure cloud services.

The country’s Fair Trade Commission is probing whether Microsoft restricted customers’ use of competing cloud services by preventing its software from running on platforms other than Azure, Bloomberg and other media reported earlier this week. 

“Japan is one of the most significant strategic markets for Microsoft and everything we do is operated with integrity,” Microsoft Japan President Miki Tsusaka said at a Bloomberg event in Tokyo on Thursday (Feb 26). “I hope that is reflected in the market in terms of day-to-day practices.” She declined to comment further on the details of the investigation.

Japan, which is the second-largest economy in Asia after China and a US ally, is a key market to winning a global race for customers against the likes of Amazon.com’s AWS and Alphabet’s Google Cloud. In 2024, Microsoft said it would invest about US2.9 billion over two years to shore up its AI and cloud computing infrastructure in Japan.

The cloud services market is expected to expand rapidly alongside the development of generative artificial intelligence, which depends on vast networks of high-performance servers. While Japan has domestic data centre operators – and the government is seeking to nurture them as part of efforts to strengthen national cybersecurity – much of the local market, as in many other countries, is dominated by US providers.

The investigation in Japan comes as the US antitrust watchdog ratchets up a probe into Microsoft’s licensing and other business practices to see whether the company illegally monopolises the enterprise computing market with its cloud software and AI offerings.

Research firm IDC expects Japan’s cloud market to reach US$121 billion in revenue by 2029, roughly double the total for 2024. The JFTC has signalled it wants to ensure the competitive landscape remains fair, particularly ahead of the anticipated surge in demand.

Japan has a lot to gain from AI adoption due to its ageing and shrinking population, but the “human side of change” remains a bottleneck in the country, Tsusaka said. “If we don’t change the way we work, we have the same meetings, we have the same PDFs and Power Points and whatnot.”

Still, the executive said she’s “very pleased” with Japan’s pace of AI adoption, compared with past technological trends.

“This time around, Japan is few points behind, but not that far,” she said. “I see growth, I see change, I see companies and individuals adopting.” BLOOMBERG