---

• Microsoft is actively working to improve Windows 11’s performance, via project ‘K2’
• Project K2 is an effort to reduce bloatware, use of AI, and optimize game performance
• Microsoft is reportedly looking at Valve’s SteamOS as the benchmark for gaming

---

Valve’s SteamOS continues to show significant advantages over Windows 11 for gamers, with better memory utilization and improved in-game performance, but Microsoft has a plan to combat that.

As reported by Windows Central, Microsoft is working on a new project labeled Windows ‘K2’, intent on removing bloatware, reducing AI, and optimizing Windows 11 for gaming, with three focuses of ‘performance, craft, and reliability’.

In early April, Dame Chi Onwurah, chair of the Science Innovation and Technology Select Committee, made some pointed remarks about the UK Government’s technology strategy, or its relative lack thereof.

Her argument centred on our dependency on a small number of Big Tech providers, principally Microsoft and AWS, with Palantir receiving mention due to their NHS and military contracts, along with legitimately framed concerns over UK dependencies on foreign supply chains.

There was much to agree with in Dame Chi’s article, with just one jarring point – her definition of sovereignty. Namely that, “it means exactly what you want it to mean.” Such a formulation might be political shorthand; the politician making a soundbite of complex concepts for public consumption, but for digital and data sovereignty it’s dangerous to over-simplify.

Politicians sometimes choose to be imprecise, but it’s important to be unambiguous here. Digital sovereignty requires that the only legislation acting on a piece of sovereign data is that of its parent country, or if you prefer; “the laws a country accepts to provide judicial primacy”.

Sovereignty an active digital battleground

Despite this, Dame Onwurah’s article was a call to action on a topic many readers probably didn’t realise was an issue. Make no mistake, sovereignty is already an active digital battleground for Big Tech and hyperscalers. It is likely to be the defining factor of technology delivery in the UK, Europe and globally for the next few years.

The digital sovereignty issue is largely a product of public cloud, and more directly high-profile court cases such as SCHREMS II, which sought to control personal data transfers to regimes deemed less likely to protect it than our own. Before public hyperscale cloud, nearly all domestic and government data processing was performed in datacentres in-country.

Non-sovereign IT or software providers occasionally required remote engineer access for support, but most access to your data was physically, as well as logically and digitally, limited to in-country.

Cloud adoption, and in particular the UK’s decision to adopt US-headquartered public cloud services, broke down those sovereign walls.

Mandated sovereign processes and contracts gave way to as-a-service models while supplier-defined terms of service allowed data offshoring, and it’s the effect of those that have led to pan-European calls for digital sovereignty.

Sovereignty is therefore commonly suggested to be a hyperscaler issue, but it’s actually broader than that. All non-sovereign (which principally means US) service providers must adjust. 

So, the term hyperscaler isn’t a useful frame for these discussions. Others like IBM, Oracle, HPE need to adapt too, and all the various approaches to sovereign cloud and IT services now distinctly fall into three types that don’t neatly meet the hyperscaler-or-not classification.

That means that a hyperscaler-specific focus when it comes to sovereign cloud and AI is counterproductive. Each provider needs to be considered independently on their own merits and approaches.

Geopolitical tension and offshoring worries

Sovereignty worries have also been driven by a period of unusually high geopolitical tension. Whilst the US remains a valued European ally, threats and posturing from the White House have caused concern amongst UK and EU leaders. The result is a swing in the pendulum, with European nations seeking more sovereign control after years of increasing reliance on US-based cloud providers. The IT industry is responding, but not all providers are making the changes they must to operate in markets defined by sovereignty rather than scalability.

Of the big three, Microsoft were the first to think about sovereign capabilities. They built a German M365 outpost years ago, though that went defunct in 2022 and they appear to be struggling most with the transition now.

Their global public cloud services (Azure and M365) operate in more than 100 countries that support UK and some European services, so to restructure that into sovereign-first operating models will take some work.  Conversely, AWS and GCP, who both use offshore processing, but are principally regional in nature, are adapting more quickly.

Another issue for Microsoft is historic lack of transparency around global data flows and exactly how their platform works. Last year Redmond was unable to give information on data flows when requested to do so by the Scottish Police Authority (a legal requirement under Data Protection laws). And more recently ProPublica revealed that US FedRAMP authorities had encountered exactly the same issues trying to certify Microsoft cloud services for US government use.

ProPublica claimed that after five years of trying and failing to get core information about Microsoft’s security and data processing in Microsoft’s US Government Community Cloud High platform, they had to give up.

This raises a question unique to Microsoft. Can they actually re-model their complex global-by-default services to deliver pure in-country sovereign cloud delivery?

They look to be struggling so far. Their commitment to deliver CoPilot in-country AI inference by the end of 2025 for the UK has just been rolled back to the end of 2026, whilst EU nations will now apparently only get regional, and not sovereign inference.

Sovereignty Levels 1 and 2

Instead of national capabilities, Microsoft is trying to focus buyers’ minds on re-defining what sovereignty means to fit their existing product stack; a strategy that previously sufficed but is unlikely to be successful again.

This is the Sovereignty Level 1 response: Adapt the definition to better align with existing product architectures.

Most non-sovereign providers have introduced “data boundary” constructs, supported by additional technical controls, though these may not fully satisfy stricter interpretations of sovereignty from data protection authorities.

Microsoft leans on this more than AWS or Google, who both have this in their sovereignty catalogue but have already moved most customer discussions on to Sovereignty Level 2.

That approach is to partner regionally and work with a local partner through a sovereign operating model.

This can improve customer confidence, but where the control plane or ultimate corporate control remains offshore, sovereignty concerns may still persist depending on the implementation.

The AWS approach centres on this option, namely that their European Sovereign Cloud is a regional platform they claim fully adheres to EU rules and regulations but fails in the basic respect that the EU is a collective, not a sovereign, entity. 

EU alignment also creates a political barrier to non-EU members like the UK. Ceding digital sovereignty to EU controls might be too much for the government to accept. It’s also not yet fully clear that corporate control is 100% vested in the AWS German representatives and Cloud Act jurisdiction might still apply.

Microsoft’s efforts to build in-country sovereign cloud in Germany and France are yet to achieve full operation, and moves by both governments to reduce Microsoft dependency may further impact their realisation.

Google and S3NS

Google’s in-country partner approach has had more success. In a joint venture with Thales, named S3NS, they’ve taken a hands-off position. S3NS now offers assured France-specific air-gapped capabilities, a fundamental requirement for sovereign cloud or AI services. Platforms that periodically “phone home” for upgrades, licence checks, or processing do not pass the sovereignty test.

S3NS bridges the gap from the Level 2 to the Level 3 approach with fully air-gapped operations, wholly under local control to give self-evident sovereign cloud.

AWS and Microsoft have air-gapped options on the table, but Google Distributed Cloud Air-Gapped (GDC-AG) is currently the most well developed and capable, despite still lacking some services that are in their public cloud platform.

It’s not particularly cheap – isolated working carries a premium – but the MOD’s announcement of a £400m contract over five years, and others of similar size in NATO and the German military attest to their trust in its sovereignty.

AWS’s alternative, LocalStack, works for development purposes but is not rated for production workloads. My previous analysis of Microsoft’s Azure Local Disconnected product makes that look distinctly beta-like in comparison.

The landscape of hyperscaler offers for sovereign cloud is thus immature. Google has found a way to deliver locally, AWS is yet to break out of the EU-region model, and Microsoft is already slipping on sovereign commitments it made for AI.

Meanwhile, as sovereignty becomes increasingly important, local cloud providers can become viable recipients of investment once again. They will however need time, government support and forward-looking investors to grow. Even then, some will likely fail.

One logical answer is a future of hybrid, partnership-led solutions. That requires a technology-neutral, cloud-ready procurement approach from government that makes portability, switching, and multi-vendor operation possible in practice. The big providers also need to be willing to make that work and may need to do so with country specific partnerships.

Google’s approach in France through S3NS provides insight into what a national cloud and hyperscale collaboration could look like; a scalable “hyper-core” under national management with flexible in-country SME delivery partners for the edge.  

If we’re serious about digital sovereignty across Europe and UK, it’s about time we started these conversations.

---

• Google is rolling out an update for the Nest Wifi router ahead of the US router ban
• The ban hasn’t come into effect, but could reduce router options significantly
• The Nest Wifi router is a solid choice, but we think Asus and Netgear are better options

---

Google has decided to go ahead with its next firmware update for the Nest Wifi router and Nest Wifi point despite the latest ban on Wifi routers manufactured outside of the US.

The update was spotted by 9to5Google, who shared that the company updated the changelog entry on April 24 with ‘stability and security vulnerability fixes’. According to the outlet, the Nest Wifi router is now running on software version 14150.883.231, and the Nest Wifi point is on version 1.56.3.497142 — the latter doubling as a Google Home speaker.

Having hit the accelerator of deploying 5G standalone (5G SA) services towards the end of 2025, the UK’s leading operator EE has revealed that it has expanded 5G+ to more than 50 million people across some 61 towns and cities in the UK after embarking on increases in capacity and performance as 5G+ customer usage accelerates.

EE first introduced its 5G SA network in September 2024, launching in 15 cities across the UK, including Bath, Belfast, Birmingham, Bradford, Bristol, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Hull, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, London, Manchester and Sheffield.

At launch, EE said its 5G SA network had been built to deliver up to 100 times more capacity than 4G connectivity, making it significantly better at handling demands from lots of devices at once.

The operator said the upgraded network would offer a smoother, more reliable and more secure mobile connection built for better live streaming, video calling and mobile gaming. In addition, it was attributed with supporting enhanced voice calls in more places, with faster setup times that reduce the delay between dialling a number and the phone starting to ring via voice over 5G (Vo5G) standalone.

Some of the most recent towns and cities gaining free 5G+ connectivity from EE include Aberystwyth, Antrim, Bangor, Barnsley, Cheltenham, Chicheste, Cirencester, Dorchester, Erskine, Melton Mowbray, Merthyr Tydfil, Newbury, Preston, Salford and St Austell.

The operator said that it has now exceeded its original target to reach 41 million people with 5G+ by spring 2026.

“This milestone shows the pace at which we’re building the UK’s most advanced mobile network,” said Greg McCall, chief security and networks officer at BT Group. “By expanding EE’s 5G+ coverage to millions more people and being the first in the world to launch new network technologies, we’re giving our customers more reliable and resilient connectivity in the places where it matters most.”

The operator added that the expansion of its 5G+ network has resulted in the 54% increase in monthly customer usage and to ensure customers receive optimal day-to-day experience on 5G+, EE has reallocated its 2.1GHz (2100MHz) spectrum across more than 4,000 mobile sites to deliver greater network capacity, stronger indoor coverage and improved upload speeds for 5G+ customers. This is seen as being particularly beneficial in built-up areas where demand is highest. EE plans to upgrade 5,000 more mobile sites in this way in the next few months.

EE also claimed that its 5G+ customers are also enjoying considerably faster download speeds after it established the UK’s first network to launch five carrier aggregation on its 5G+ enabled mobile sites. This is designed to allow compatible 5G+ smartphones and devices to combine the power of five spectrum bands at once. The company said this has resulted 10% faster download speeds on average and improved performance when streaming video.

As it was announcing its 5G+ expansion, EE revealed further progress on the roll-out of Advanced RAN Coordination (ARC) technology to enable mobile sites close to each other to dynamically share capacity in real time. EE stated that it is the first network in the world – and the only in the UK – to deploy ARC technology operator, saying it has instantly boosted network performance by 20% without the need for additional masts.

ARC technology is seen as particularly beneficial in business use cases in busy locations such as train stations, high streets and city centres. Following the launch of the technology in Manchester and Edinburgh in 2025, ARC is now also live on EE’s 5G+ network in London. By the end of May 2026, it will be available in more of the UK’s busiest cities including Belfast, Cardiff, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Sheffield.

Meta is continuing to invest aggressively to meet its technology infrastructure requirements, involving datacentre expansion and supply chain deals to secure components for future capacity. The company’s latest quarterly earnings filing shows Meta has embarked on a strategy to sign up for multi-year cloud contracts driving $107bn in contractual commitments for Q1 2026.

For the quarter that ended in March 2026, Meta posted revenue of $56.3bn, a 33% increase from the same quarter in 2025.

The company has forecast that its capital expenditures, including principal payments on finance leases, has increased by $10bn due to component price increases and additional datacentre costs, putting CapEx in the range of $125bn to $145bn.

Chief financial officer Susan Li said: “Our investments will support our training needs for future models, and most importantly, provide us with the inference capacity necessary to deliver personal and business agents to billions of people around the world, along with several other AI product experiences we’re developing.”

Responding to a question during the earnings call about balancing model training versus product launches and the potential impact on Meta’s 2027 capital expenditure, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is moving towards greater capabilities and scaling of AI models. “We have the research team, which is focused on scaling increasingly intelligent models with capabilities for the specific things that we’re focused on, which are business and personal agents,” he said.

Beyond model development, Zuckerberg said: “We have our next set of more advanced models in training now. And that work will continue. I don’t think we’re going to be done with that anytime soon.”

He emphasised the significance of Meta AI models in product development. “The product team is really unlocked to be able to build things on top of our models because we now have a very strong model,” said Zuckerberg.

When Li was asked about how the company uses large language models in its ad business to direct adverts to users, she said: “The size and complexity would make them too cost-prohibitive.”

Instead, Li said the way Meta uses large language models is to transfer knowledge to smaller, more lightweight models. “The inference models are bound by strict latency requirements since they need to find the right ad within milliseconds, and that has, again, historically prevented us from meaningfully sizing up – to scale up their size and complexity,” she added.

Li said Meta plans to tackle this scaling issue with the introduction of an adaptive ranking model later this year, using the model complexity of a trillion parameters. “We made advances in the model architecture and co-design the system with the underlying silicon, so it maintains the sub-second speed that is required to serve ads at scale,” she added.

Commenting on Meta’s strategy, Forrester vice-president research director Mike Proulx said: “Meta’s future‑facing AI ambitions are being underwritten almost entirely by the company’s legacy business: advertising inside social media apps. There’s no material AI revenue yet.

“The question is whether Meta’s core can continue to act as a cash cow while the company reduces headcount and diverts focus toward AI,” he said. “If Meta’s ad engine slows, the market’s margin for patience shrinks fast. Meta’s slight dip in daily active users is already beginning to raise eyebrows. Q2 will tell us if it’s really just a blip or the start of a trend.”

Cloud service provider revenues worldwide for the first quarter of 2026 were up by $35bn year-on-year (YoY) and reached $129bn, according to data from US-based datacentre and cloud market analysts Synergy Research Group, which takes into account the hyperscalers – Amazon Webs Services (AWS), Google Cloud and Microsoft – plus tier two providers that include artificial intelligence (AI-)focused neoclouds, as well as more general cloud providers.

The market is accelerating quickly – possibly driven by AI deployments – when comparing run rate with actual trailing 12-month revenues. Q1 2026 was the ninth successive quarter in which YoY growth increased, attaining 35%.

According to the Synergy data, cloud service revenues have hit their highest growth rate since the fourth quarter of 2021, when the market was 40% of its current size. That swelling of revenues could be down to AI driving major changes in the cloud market.

The hyperscalers maintain a strong lead in the market, with Amazon in top position – however, Microsoft and Google achieved substantially higher growth rates, with their Q1 worldwide market shares 28%, 21% and 14% respectively. 

Among tier two cloud providers, those with the highest growth rates include CoreWeave, OpenAI, Oracle, Crusoe, Nebius, Anthropic and ByteDance. Based on cloud infrastructure service revenues, five neocloud companies are now among the top 30 cloud providers.

Synergy estimates that – with the majority of major cloud providers having now released earnings data for Q1 – quarterly cloud infrastructure service revenues were $128.6bn, with trailing 12-month revenues reaching $455bn. Those include IaaS, PaaS and hosted private cloud services.

With historical – i.e. trailing 12-month revenues of $455bn – and a run rate of $514.4bn calculated from this year’s Q1, the $59.4bn difference shows how quickly the market is accelerating, equating to an acceleration delta of 13%.

“The Q1 market is now fifteen times larger than it was a decade ago and continues to expand at 35% annually,” said John Dinsdale, chief analyst at Synergy Research Group. “Reaching a half-trillion-dollar run rate underscores the far-reaching impact of cloud computing and AI on the IT landscape.

“Our forecasts point to sustained strong growth in the years ahead, with AI continuing to drive usage, unlock new use cases and boost cloud provider revenues. At the same time, the competitive landscape is evolving, with neoclouds playing an increasingly significant role and already accounting for 5% of the total cloud market and a substantially larger share of AI-focused segments.”

US fastest growing region

Public IaaS and PaaS services account for the bulk of the market, according to Synergy, and those grew by 38% in Q1. The leadership of the major cloud providers is even more pronounced in public cloud, where the top three account for 67% of the market. 

Geographically, the cloud market continues to grow strongly in all regions of the world. When measured in local currencies, the major countries with the strongest growth included India, Indonesia, Ireland, Taiwan, Thailand and Malaysia, where growth rates were all well above the worldwide average. 

The US remains by far the largest cloud market, with its scale far surpassing the whole APAC region. The US market grew by 37% in Q1. In Europe, the largest cloud markets are the UK and Germany, but the markets with the highest growth rates were Ireland, Norway and Poland.