Antitrust & Competition

In December 2025, a US federal court certified a nationwide class action lawsuit against Ticketmaster, representing millions of consumers who paid allegedly inflated service fees. The class certification enables billions of dollars in potential damages claims. The lawsuit alleges Ticketmaster exploited its monopoly position to charge supracompetitive fees that would not exist in a competitive ticketing market.

Chief Judge James Boasberg ruled after a six-week bench trial that the FTC failed to prove Meta unlawfully monopolized 'personal social networking.' The court found TikTok and YouTube are legitimate competitors, noting Americans spend only 17% of time on Facebook viewing friends' content. The ruling was the most decisive government loss in any major Big Tech antitrust case. The FTC appealed in January 2026.

The UK Competition Appeal Tribunal concluded Apple abused its dominant position by charging excessive commissions on App Store purchases between 2015 and 2024. The tribunal found Apple's commissions excessive and unfair, estimating fair fees at 17.5% for distribution and 10% for payment services versus Apple's actual rates. Damages were awarded to consumers for unlawful overcharges passed on by developers. Apple has indicated it will appeal.

In October 2025, China's SAMR opened antitrust investigation into Qualcomm's June 2025 acquisition of Israeli automotive chipmaker Autotalks. Qualcomm completed the deal without filing merger notification despite SAMR's March 2024 written notice requiring filing. Qualcomm had initially claimed it was dropping the deal after regulatory notice, then proceeded anyway. With $17.8B China revenue (46% of total), Qualcomm faces potential penalty up to $1.8 billion. Shares fell 4% on probe announcement.

Consumer group Which? filed class action lawsuit on behalf of 29 million UK consumers who purchased Apple and Samsung smartphones between October 2015 and January 2024. The lawsuit alleges Qualcomm abused market dominance in chipset and patent-licensing markets, forcing phone manufacturers to pay inflated fees passed to consumers. Five-week trial began October 2025 at London's Competition Appeal Tribunal. Potential average payout of £17 per device if successful. Ruling on liability expected late 2025.

In October 2025, ARM lost its lawsuit against Qualcomm after a U.S. District Court confirmed Qualcomm's jury trial victory and rejected ARM's claims that Qualcomm breached architecture license agreements. ARM had sued Qualcomm in August 2022 for breach of contract related to the Nuvia acquisition. Critics noted that now that ARM owns Ampere Computing and directly competes with its own customers, it lends credence to Qualcomm's claims of anticompetitive behavior. The lawsuit creates risk by pushing chip designers toward open-source RISC-V alternatives, creating existential threat to ARM's licensing model.

The EU Commission fined Delivery Hero €223 million (€329 million total with Glovo) for running a cartel from 2018-2022. This was the first EU case finding a labor market cartel and first sanctioning anti-competitive use of a minority stake. Violations included: no-poach agreements (not hiring each other's employees), exchange of commercially sensitive information, and geographic market allocation.

European Union fined Delivery Hero and subsidiary Glovo €329 million in June 2025 for violating antitrust rules between 2018-2022. First time EU sanctioned agreement limiting workers' freedom to move to competitors. Companies exchanged sensitive business information, agreed not to recruit each other's employees (initially managers, later extended to all staff except self-employed delivery drivers), and divided up national food delivery markets across Europe. By July 2020, firms stopped competing entirely by avoiding overlapping markets, limiting consumer choice and likely raising prices.

The European Commission found Apple breached its anti-steering obligation under the Digital Markets Act by imposing restrictions that prevent app developers from fully benefiting from alternative distribution channels outside the App Store. Apple's practices were found to limit competition and consumer choice in the app ecosystem.

The European Commission issued its first-ever Digital Markets Act fine, finding Meta's 'consent or pay' model violated DMA obligations to give consumers a choice of service using less personal data. Meta offered EU users of Facebook and Instagram only a binary choice between consenting to full data combination for personalized ads or paying a subscription. Internal documents revealed the model 'was never intended to comply' with the DMA, with Meta's own estimates predicting below 1% subscription uptake. The violation period ran from March to November 2024.

U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema ruled Google violated Section 2 of the Sherman Act by monopolizing markets for publisher ad servers (~90% share) and ad exchanges (~50% share), and violated Section 1 by illegally tying its products together. This was Google's second major antitrust loss, separate from the August 2024 search monopoly ruling. The DOJ sought divestiture of Google's ad exchange (AdX) and publisher ad server (DFP). Remedies trial scheduled for September 2025.

Federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled Apple 'willfully' failed to comply with previous injunctions in the Epic Games case. The judge found that Apple executives had lied and knowingly took an anti-competitive route to demonstrate compliance. She extended injunctions to prevent Apple from collecting fees from third-party storefronts and referred the case to the federal attorney's office for possible criminal contempt proceedings.

Tan announced he was stepping back from local San Francisco political group GrowSF to 'focus on DC this year.' In interviews, he praised Trump's antitrust picks and expressed hope that J.D. Vance would have 'a really deep influence on what the Trump Administration does.'

Wolfire Games filed antitrust suit in April 2021 after Valve threatened to remove their game for offering lower prices on competing stores. Internal emails show Valve actively monitoring and enforcing pricing parity. Certified as class action in November 2024 with ~32,000 game developer class members. Damages sought potentially exceed $6.4 billion under treble damages.

The European Commission opened an antitrust investigation into Broadcom in October 2024 over concerns the company is using anticompetitive practices following its $69 billion VMware acquisition. The investigation focuses on allegations that Broadcom is tying VMware products together to force customers into comprehensive deals, restricting interoperability with competing products, and using its dominant position to lock customers into its ecosystem. The European Cloud Competition Observatory gave Broadcom a 'red' rating indicating serious competitive concerns.

Qualcomm agreed to pay $75 million in 2024 to settle shareholder lawsuit alleging the company defrauded investors by hiding its anticompetitive sales and licensing practices from February 2012 to January 2017. Shareholders accused Qualcomm of artificially inflating share price by describing chip sales and licensing as separate when it bundled them to stifle competition. Former CEOs Paul Jacobs and Steven Mollenkopf were named defendants but denied wrongdoing.

In September 2024, Mullenweg publicly attacked WP Engine as a 'cancer to WordPress' and demanded 8% of revenue ($32M) as trademark licensing. When WP Engine declined, he blocked their access to WordPress.org, disrupting over a million websites. He then seized WP Engine's ACF plugin without review. WP Engine sued for extortion, unfair competition, and defamation. A court granted a preliminary injunction restoring WP Engine's access. 159 Automattic employees (8.4%) took buyout packages to leave.

In September 2024, the EU General Court upheld a €238.7 million ($265.5M) fine against Qualcomm for predatory pricing below cost during 2009-2011. Qualcomm sold UMTS chipsets to Huawei and ZTE below cost to eliminate UK competitor Icera (later acquired by Nvidia). The court found Qualcomm abused its dominant position through pricing strategy designed to exclude competitors.

The U.S. Department of Justice escalated its antitrust investigation of Nvidia by issuing legally binding subpoenas in September 2024. The DOJ investigated concerns that Nvidia made it harder to switch to other AI chip suppliers, penalized buyers not exclusively using its chips, and that its $700 million acquisition of RunAI could foreclose competition. Separately, China's SAMR found in September 2025 that Nvidia violated anti-monopoly law related to its 2020 Mellanox acquisition by allegedly tying GPU purchases to networking equipment. France also opened an investigation in 2024.

NVIDIA faces simultaneous antitrust investigations in three major markets. The US DOJ issued a subpoena in September 2024 investigating whether NVIDIA makes it harder to switch suppliers and penalizes buyers not exclusively using its chips. France raided NVIDIA offices in September 2023, with June 2024 findings of likely abuse through price fixing, production restrictions, and discriminatory behavior. China's SAMR launched an investigation in December 2024 for suspected AML violations related to a 2020 transaction.