Antitrust & Competition

The Department of Justice began questioning Nvidia and market participants about the competitive effects of Nvidia's proposed $12.9 billion acquisition of AI platform Hugging Face, examining whether Nvidia could use the acquisition to disadvantage rivals, gain anticompetitive leverage, or harm Hugging Face's competitors. The inquiry is part of a broader, years-long DOJ scrutiny of Nvidia's dealmaking that also covers its Groq, SchedMD, and Run:ai transactions. A DOJ spokesperson characterized the outreach as routine merger review; no formal charges or blocking action have been announced.

Following 'substantive regulatory dialogue' with the European Commission under the Digital Markets Act, Booking.com implemented voluntary changes on September 28, 2026: it removed contractual parity clauses that barred hotels from offering lower prices on their own websites, stopped using external price comparisons to determine eligibility for its 'Booking Sponsored Benefit' placement, and published new transparency information on ranking methodology and program eligibility criteria (Genius, Preferred, Preferred Plus). The European Commission described these as compliance measures following dialogue, not a formal infringement decision or fine. The changes are without prejudice to separate ongoing national antitrust investigations in Greece, Italy, and Spain.

The US Department of Justice opened an antitrust investigation into Nvidia's licensing agreement with AI inference chip startup Groq, examining whether the deal was structured to neutralize a potential competitor in the AI chip market. The investigation is ongoing with no conclusions reached as of October 2026.

The EU General Court rejected Booking.com's appeal of the European Commission's 2023 prohibition of its EUR1.63 billion ($1.90 billion) acquisition of flight-booking group eTraveli. The Commission had found the deal would strengthen Booking.com's dominant position in the hotel online-travel-agency market and let it foreclose rival flight-and-hotel bundling competitors, even though the merger would have increased Booking's market share by only a few tenths of a percent. The court found errors in the Commission's market-share calculations but left the prohibition in force.

On September 3, 2026, app developers filed a £2 billion ($2.7 billion) claim at London's Competition Appeal Tribunal alleging Apple abused its market power through its App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, imposing stricter tracking-consent restrictions on third-party developers than on Apple's own advertising and services, giving Apple an unfair competitive advantage. The case is brought by developers represented by Ann Pope, a former senior official at the UK's Competition and Markets Authority. Apple says ATT exists to let users control tracking permissions. The claim follows a separate German Bundeskartellamt finding in August 2026 that ATT self-preferenced Apple's own services.

South Korea's Fair Trade Commission (KFTC) made four attempts between August 19-24, 2026 to investigate allegations that Coupang's automatic price-matching coupon (PMC) system shifted discount costs onto suppliers by deducting them from supplier settlement payments while leaving listed prices unchanged, a possible violation of the Large Retail Business Act. Coupang refused to cooperate, citing lack of prior notice -- the first time a Large Retail Business Act investigation was derailed by company resistance since the law's enactment. On September 1-2, 2026 the KFTC sent roughly 30 investigators to raid Coupang's Seoul headquarters, this time seeking about 10 years of data (2016-2026), an unusually broad scope compared to the typical 3-5 year window. Coupang maintains it bears the marketing costs itself and has filed suit to overturn a prior related KFTC decision; a court has temporarily suspended that decision's effect through September 23, 2026.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission executed a search warrant on WiseTech Global's offices on August 19, 2026, gathering evidence in an investigation into alleged contraventions of competition law involving WiseTech's CargoWise logistics software, the dominant platform used across major global freight-forwarding businesses. Shares fell as much as 8.7-12% on the news, the steepest single-day drop since June 2026. The ACCC has not disclosed which specific conduct or business divisions are under investigation. The warrant follows a January 2026 enforcement action in which the ACCC accepted a court-enforceable undertaking requiring WiseTech to divest the Expedient software it acquired via e2open, after the regulator found WiseTech already held substantial market power in logistics software.

On August 17, 2026 Germany's Federal Cartel Office (Bundeskartellamt) closed its investigation into Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework after finding Apple applied stricter, more discouraging consent prompts to third-party apps than to its own advertising and services, self-preferencing Apple's offerings. Rather than a fine, Apple agreed to binding commitments: visually and linguistically neutral consent prompts (removing the warning-hand icon and the word 'tracking'), expanded explanation space for developers, and the ability to combine ATT prompts with developers' own data-protection consent requests, implemented within four months and monitored by an independent trustee for seven years. France and Italy had previously fined Apple over the same ATT framework.

On July 17, 2026, Beijing-based Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, reportedly matching Anthropic's Claude Fable 5 at a fraction of the cost. The White House subsequently accused Moonshot of building K3 by distilling Claude, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent floating possible sanctions. Amodei escalated a campaign he had already been running (podcast interviews, public statements) claiming Chinese labs including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and Minimax 'stole' Claude's capabilities via large-scale distillation and that their benchmark scores are gamed, citing a held-back benchmark where Chinese models allegedly underperformed relative to their public SWE-bench scores. He proposed three policy responses: (1) chip export controls targeting China and smuggling networks, (2) crackdowns on large-scale distillation by Chinese labs, and (3) mandatory pre-release safety testing (cyber/bio/alignment) for 'sufficiently capable' models regardless of open or closed license or origin. Around July 25, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang posted an open letter opposing restrictions on open-weight models, with several AI companies publicly siding against Anthropic's framing. Critics — including a Washington Examiner op-ed and other independent analyses — argued each of Amodei's three proposals disproportionately burdens exactly the competitors currently undercutting Anthropic on price and performance (Chinese labs and open-weight developers who lack independent chip supply or resources for heavy compliance testing), amounting to a bid for regulatory capture dressed as safety advocacy. On July 28, Anthropic published a blog post ('Our position on open-weights models') with Amodei explicitly denying he supports a ban on open-weight models, distinguishing his opposition to state-backed distillation from opposition to open weights themselves.

The European Commission concluded a formal antitrust investigation (opened September 2025) into SAP's maintenance and support practices for its on-premise ERP software. The Commission had found SAP potentially engaged in four anticompetitive practices: preventing customers from cancelling maintenance tied to unused licenses, imposing retroactive charges on customers returning after a hiatus, extending license terms to block maintenance termination, and forcing customers to use SAP exclusively for on-premise maintenance. On July 9, 2026, the Commission accepted binding commitments from SAP without imposing a fine: SAP agreed to let customers split their software estate among multiple maintenance providers, waive reinstatement fees, cap back-maintenance charges, and allow license/maintenance termination in defined circumstances including workforce reductions over 10%.

Argentina's Buenos Aires provincial government opened a consumer-protection investigation in late May 2026 into MercadoLibre over allegedly abusive contract terms imposed on platform sellers and buyers, with regulators publicly indicating a fine of up to 1.8 billion pesos was under consideration. The probe followed earlier provincial enforcement against Rappi for undisclosed surcharges and is part of a broader Buenos Aires push to regulate platform contracts and undisclosed fees.

The US Federal Trade Commission opened a formal antitrust investigation into Arm Holdings, notifying the UK-based, SoftBank-majority-owned chip designer in early 2026 and issuing a document-preservation demand, with the probe becoming public via Bloomberg on May 15, 2026. Investigators are examining whether Arm intends to refuse or degrade the quality of its CPU architecture licenses for third-party customers such as Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia while simultaneously ramping up its own chip business. The investigation follows Arm's March 2026 announcement of the 'Arm AGI CPU,' a 136-core data-center processor co-developed with Meta -- the company's first production silicon after roughly 35 years as a neutral licensor -- which put Arm in direct competition with its own licensees. Arm shares fell about 8.5% on news of the probe. The investigation follows a related complaint by licensee Qualcomm to competition authorities in the US, EU, and South Korea over Arm's licensing practices.

In April 2026, a US District Court issued remedies in the landmark Google search antitrust case: Google was prohibited from entering exclusive contracts for Search, Chrome, Assistant, and Gemini distribution; required to share its search index and user-interaction data with competitors; and placed under a six-year technical oversight committee. Both sides are appealing -- Google challenging the data-sharing requirement, and the DOJ seeking forced divestitures of Chrome and other assets.

Italy's antitrust authority (AGCM) opened an investigation into Booking.com over alleged unfair commercial practices in how it ranks and presents hotels. The probe targets the 'Preferred Partner' and 'Preferred Partner Plus' programs, which Booking.com markets as selecting properties based on service quality and value for money, but which regulators allege actually favor hotels that pay higher commissions with better search placement and visual prominence. Booking.com said the programs are optional and compliant with consumer protection rules; the investigation is ongoing.

Google executive Kent Walker personally lobbied against California SB 1074 (the 'BASED Act'), coordinating with Apple to defeat the bill in a 3-3 tie vote on April 20, 2026. The bill would have banned self-preferencing by platforms owned by companies worth over $1 trillion. Five trade groups including Chamber of Progress (whose members include Google) issued coordinated opposition 'within minutes' of introduction.

Apple and Google coordinated lobbying to defeat California SB 1074 (the 'BASED Act'), which would have banned self-preferencing by platforms owned by companies worth over $1 trillion. The bill was killed in a 3-3 tie vote on April 20, 2026. Five trade groups including Chamber of Progress issued coordinated opposition 'within minutes' of introduction. Apple's Senior Director Tim Powderly and Google executive Kent Walker personally lobbied against the bill. Senator Scott Wiener described the opposition as a 'tidal wave' of corporate lobbying. Big Tech spent over $100M killing similar federal legislation in 2022.

India's Competition Commission (CCI) investigation, whose Director General report concluded in 2024 that Apple engaged in 'abusive conduct' on the iOS app platform by wrongfully mandating use of Apple's own in-app payment system, has continued to escalate through 2026. Apple has not submitted the financial data the CCI needs to calculate a penalty since October 2024, instead citing a separate case it filed in Delhi High Court challenging the constitutionality of India's antitrust penalty law. Because CCI penalties can be based on up to 10% of a company's global turnover over the prior three years, Apple faces a potential fine of as much as $38 billion if the CCI uses Apple's worldwide (rather than India-only) revenue as the base. In April 2026 the CCI set a final hearing after Apple's continued data withholding, and in June 2026 Apple escalated its defense by accusing CCI investigators of 'copy-pasting' submissions from rival companies (including Match/Tinder, PhonePe, and Paytm) rather than conducting independent analysis, and argued it is a 'minuscule player' with under 6% of India's smartphone market. A closed-door CCI hearing was held July 21, 2026, with a final decision still pending. Google previously made similar 'chilling effect' arguments to the CCI in 2023 but was still ordered to change its Android practices.

On March 12, 2026, EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera announced investigation into Nvidia for potential bundling practices that force buyers to purchase networking equipment to access AI chips. This is part of broader EU scrutiny of Big Tech's AI operations for competition distortions, separate from the ongoing US DOJ investigation.

On March 12, 2026, EU antitrust chief Teresa Ribera announced an investigation into Meta over WhatsApp policies that may block competitors' AI chatbots from the platform. The investigation examines whether Meta is using its dominant messaging position to prevent rival AI services from reaching WhatsApp's user base, as part of broader EU scrutiny of Big Tech's AI operations.

On March 4, 2026, the Amsterdam District Court ruled that Booking.com's price-parity clauses (used 2004-2024, which barred hotels from offering lower rates through other channels) violated EU competition law, following a September 2024 CJEU preliminary ruling to the same effect. The case, brought by the Stichting Hotel Claims Alliance (SHCA) on behalf of participating hotels, moved to a damages phase. SHCA's collective action grew from 3,087 hotels at its January 30, 2026 filing to 10,783 hotels by a July 30, 2026 expansion filing, with a further expansion targeting roughly 18,000 hotels planned for autumn 2026. Hotels are seeking damages estimated at 30% or more of commissions paid to Booking.com over 2004-2024, amounting to several billion euros, backed by HOTREC and more than 30 national hospitality associations.