Antitrust in the technology sector
May 2026 | BRIEFING ROOM | COMPETITION & ANTITRUST
Financier Worldwide Magazine
May 2026 Issue
FW discusses antitrust in the technology sector with Nikolaos Peristerakis at K&L Gates and Joseph M. Rancour at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP and Affiliates.
FW: How has the level of regulatory scrutiny of the technology sector evolved over the past 12 months or so? To what extent is antitrust enforcement increasing?
Peristerakis: Regulatory scrutiny of the technology sector has intensified significantly in the European Union (EU) on both the Digital Markets Act (DMA) and antitrust enforcement fronts. DMA enforcement has already moved rapidly in its first full year since coming into force. In April 2025, the European Commission (EC) fined Apple €500m for breaching the DMA’s anti-steering rules and Meta €200m in connection with its ‘pay or consent’ model. On 19 September 2025, the EC adopted two specification decisions against Apple requiring broad interoperability between third-party devices and iOS and iPadOS. On 27 January 2026, the EC opened two additional specification proceedings against Google, aimed at securing fair access for third party artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots to Android and Google Search data. On the antitrust front, in September 2025, the EC imposed a €2.95bn fine on Google in the AdTech case and continued to assess Google’s proposed remedies concerning alleged self-preferencing of its own ad exchange. In the same month, the EC accepted Microsoft unbundling and interoperability commitments to address concerns about the tying of Teams to Microsoft’s Office suites. On 9 December 2025, the EC opened a further abuse of dominance investigation relating to Google’s use of online content for AI training and Meta’s restrictions on AI providers offering their products to WhatsApp users. In the UK, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is still developing the bespoke conduct requirements applicable to the firms it has so far designated as holding ‘strategic market status’, namely Google in search and mobile platforms and Apple in mobile platforms. The CMA has also conducted a major market investigation into cloud services, which already resulted in Microsoft and Amazon agreeing to reduce cloud egress fees and improve interoperability. On 31 March 2026, the CMA announced a further SMS investigation into Microsoft’s cloud services and AI-enabled productivity tools, focusing on the interaction between Microsoft’s software licensing practices and competition in cloud services and AI-enabled productivity tools.
Rancour: Regulatory scrutiny in the technology sector remains high as regulators look to adapt their competition toolkits to a rapidly evolving landscape. In the US, technology markets have been an antitrust enforcement priority across Democratic and Republican administrations due a common scepticism around so-called ‘big tech’, particularly around digital platform technologies and AI ecosystems that have become increasingly important to the digital economy and integral to a range of both enterprise and consumer-facing products. Similarly, in recent years, regulators in the EU and UK have been deploying new legislative tools and evolving theories of harm to assess questions of potential market dominance and foreclosure of competition in digital markets. Recent scrutiny of tech markets by a number of major regulators around the world is a continuation of prioritising enforcement in this sector, and the increasing importance of AI is creating new areas of focus.
FW: What types of antitrust infringements are most commonly associated with technology companies? How would you assess the current level of market power held by ‘big tech’ firms?
Rancour: In recent years, investigations and enforcement actions in the tech space have varied, but a number of investigations have focused on the question of whether large technology platforms have wielded allegedly ‘dominant’ market positions in leading product areas to entrench a position or exclude or inhibit rivals from effectively competing. Technology markets are also a key priority for merger enforcement regimes around the world, particularly where a merger poses the potential for a potentially dominant technology provider to take out an emerging competitive threat – so-called ‘killer acquisitions’ – or to acquire a key player in a related market to prevent rivals from challenging an incumbent status quo. Another area of recent action that has emerged with the growth of AI are claims related to the use of algorithmic pricing as a potential vehicle for competitors to reach an agreement or understanding on pricing or other market behaviour. Regulators have also struggled with how to apply the competition laws to novel transactions such as ‘acqui-hires’ that have become common in the tech space. To the question of the level of market power in ‘big tech’, although there are a number of large technology platforms with segment-leading positions, it is important to remember that ‘big’ does not always mean ‘bad’, and the evaluation of market power and allegedly anticompetitive business practices should be tailored to fact-based analysis that is specific to product markets, the commercial behaviour in question and takes into account evolving competitive dynamics, which can change markets in meaningful ways as disruptive innovation emerges.
Peristerakis: The antitrust theories most commonly associated with large technology companies fall into three broad categories. First is self-preferencing, where a dominant platform favours its own services over those of rivals. Self-preferencing was a rather novel theory of harm, until the 2017 Google Shopping case. Second is tying and bundling, where dominance in one market is leveraged into a neighbouring one. This remains a classic concern in digital markets, particularly where ecosystems are structured in ways that make complementary services difficult to avoid. Third is platform lock-in, where business users or end users face significant friction in switching to competing services. The EC’s action against Apple’s anti-steering rules for music-streaming applications is a good example. That conduct resulted in a €1.8bn fine in 2024, a decision that Apple is currently appealing. As to market power, the core positions of the largest technology platforms have not materially weakened in the EU and the UK. What is more interesting, however, is that the most credible threat to big tech has come not from regulation but from the emergence of new AI players, including OpenAI, Anthropic and many others.
“AI is becoming a focal point for technology policy and competition enforcement.”
FW: How effective has enforcement been under the EU’s Digital Markets Act and the UK’s Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act? What procompetition duties do these regimes impose on designated ‘gatekeeper’ platforms?
Peristerakis: Under the DMA, enforcement has progressed quickly from designation to investigation and fines, as demonstrated by the April 2025 decisions against Apple and Meta. That speed has also generated concerns about due process and legal certainty, particularly given the complexity of the obligations imposed on gatekeepers and the relatively limited compliance guidance available to date. While the DMA’s core obligations are framed as measures designed to secure fair access and improve contestability, they have also created concerns about the impact of such measures on incentives to innovate, service quality, user experience or security. As a result, the long-term effectiveness of the DMA will depend on how the EC will balance those competing imperatives in practice. The jury is still out on the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA). The CMA is still consulting on the conduct requirements to be imposed on Google and Apple, and those obligations are expected to be more bespoke than the generally applicable duties found in the DMA. It is therefore too early to offer a definitive assessment of effectiveness, although the UK model may ultimately prove more flexible because it is tailored to the specific features of each designated firm and activity.
Rancour: Both the EU and UK are using these recent legislative efforts to launch new investigations into the conduct of technology players, and the EU has demonstrated that it is willing to impose significant fines where it determines that firms that meet the definition of gatekeepers have not met their obligations. For example, in 2025, the EC fined Apple €500m for what the EC found to be violations of the DMA’s anti-steering obligations and fined Meta €200m for its ‘consent or pay’ advertising model that the EC found did not provide customers with alternatives that use less personal data. The EU’s DMA imposes several categories of dos and don’ts on firms qualifying as ‘gatekeepers’, including obligations and restrictions related to issues such as permitting interoperability, allowing businesses access to data they create on the platform, permitting customers to access alternatives to the platform services, known as ‘anti-steering’, avoiding self-preferencing, and restricting customer tracking without consent. For the UK, the DMCCA is designed to enforce similar goals relating to user choice, fairness and equal treatment by digital platforms with market power, but obligations are to be tailored to the specifics of firms found to have ‘strategic market status’. Importantly, these new rules are limited to only specified firms that are determined to have market power or entrenched positions. However, these rules impact how designated large technology platforms can implement policies and terms of service on their platforms that could impact competition.
FW: To what degree is AI becoming a priority for regulators? How can existing antitrust frameworks be applied to generative AI and cross-sector partnerships that fall outside traditional regulatory categories?
Rancour: AI is becoming a focal point for technology policy and competition enforcement – both as leading AI models grow to be potentially critical inputs or points of interoperability across a range of business models, and as AI tools introduce potentially disruptive new competition to established markets that may pose threats to incumbent firms. But beyond AI software and models, regulators are also monitoring how the AI revolution is driving investment and competitive activity in a range of supporting product markets like hardware and infrastructure. Regulators are keenly interested in understanding the role of AI as it relates to market structure and competitive effects in merger enforcement, as well as the impact of AI positions on reducing or increasing barriers to entry and the potential for how AI can augment interactions between competitors, such as the ways in which information is shared, how products interact with each other and how AI-based collaborations may impact competitive incentives. From a US perspective, traditional antitrust tools have stood the test of time and have demonstrated they are flexible enough to be adapted to new market developments. As such, they can and should be used to assess competition in these modern markets, but enforcers need to take into account how the dynamic and evolving nature of these tools can impact questions like market definition and analysis of likely pro-competitive as well as anticompetitive effects for a given set of business conduct.
Peristerakis: AI is a key enforcement priority for regulators in both the EU and the UK. The central concern is to ensure that established technology firms do not foreclose emerging generative AI (genAI) competitors by leveraging their strength in critical inputs across the AI stack, including GPUs, data, compute infrastructure and distribution channels, or by using acquisitions and acqui-hires to neutralise uniquely positioned mavericks. That concern is already visible in antitrust and DMA enforcement. In December 2025, the EC opened two abuse of dominance investigations in the genAI space: one concerning Google’s use of online content for AI training, and another concerning Meta’s restrictions on AI providers seeking to offer their products to WhatsApp users. In January 2026, the EC also opened two DMA specification proceedings against Google concerning access for third-party chatbots to Android and to Google Search query and search data. While the EC appears willing to use both the DMA and article 102 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) aggressively to shape competitive conditions in AI, the position in the US is markedly different. The US does not view regulation as appropriate for a fast-evolving sector like AI. Gail Slater at the US Department of Justice has characteristically likened ex ante regulation to a sledgehammer, whereas ex post antitrust enforcement is a scalpel, more suitable for fast-evolving industries like AI.
“There is a real risk that overregulation of digital markets may undermine technological innovation and discourage pro-competitive transactions.”
FW: Could you outline recent, high profile antitrust cases brought against major digital platforms, and how regulators addressed complex issues such as market definition, market power and jurisdiction?
Peristerakis: The most significant antitrust development of 2025 is the CJEU’s Android Auto judgement, which expanded the duty to deal for dominant platforms open to third-party developers in the EU. Unlike the US, where such a duty is in exceptional circumstances under the essential facilities doctrine, Android Auto makes it the norm in the EU. The ruling requires dominant platforms to take positive steps – including changing their own product roadmap – to accommodate third-party access, even where such access is commercially attractive rather than strictly necessary for third parties requesting access, and without requiring any assessment of anti-competitive effects of a refusal in a clearly defined downstream market. This judgment has significant implications for all open platforms, even beyond tech. On the merger control front, the Illumina/Grail case tested the EC's approach to below-threshold transactions, asserting jurisdiction despite Grail having zero EU revenues and not triggering filings under any EU or national merger control. Following the CJEU's 2024 judgment in Illumina v. Commission, that policy was abandoned, though the EC retains the ability to review transactions referred by member states with below-threshold call-in powers – an approach now being tested on appeal before the General Court in NVIDIA v. Commission. On the substantive front, the EC's 2023 prohibition of Booking/eTraveli broke new ground by applying an entrenchment theory of harm to a dominant ecosystem, departing from traditional foreclosure-based analysis under the 2008 Non-Horizontal Merger Guidelines. The decision, criticised for this novel approach, is currently under appeal by Booking before the General Court.
Rancour: The US Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) 2025 loss of its monopoly case against Meta relating to its acquisition of WhatsApp and Instragram stands out as a key recent example of how market definition and the identification of market power in the technology sector can pose significant challenges for regulators, as well as how technological convergence and its impact on competitive dynamics can play a critical role in competition enforcement. This is true everywhere, but particularly important for antitrust matters in the US where the government or private plaintiffs must prove out a case in front of a judge that will apply decades of antitrust precedent to modern fact patterns. In the Meta case, the FTC based its claims around Facebook/Meta maintaining a monopoly power in personal social networking that included Facebook and Instagram as the leading products. But the court determined that the FTC’s view of the market was much too narrow given the obvious feature competition and user substitution between Meta and social media services like YouTube and TikTok that the FTC left out of its claimed relevant market. The judge focused on the function and features that had emerged from the broader landscape of social media available to consumers instead of limiting the market analysis to products that may have been described as qualitatively distinct by the FTC, but in reality, faced new competitive constraints from a broader set of products that offered features that were very comparable to important features of Facebook and Instagram. In this sense, the convergence of features and functionality across platforms that began as distinct products was critical for understanding the current competitive reality.
FW: Given the introduction of new digital markets legislation in the UK and EU, how can regulators balance strong enforcement with the need to support innovation, investment and legitimate dealmaking?
Rancour: When enacting and enforcing new legislation, regulators should be sensitive to the fact that technology markets move fast and evolve constantly. Innovation is driven not just by the largest companies with the largest budgets, but also by entrepreneurial investment from a range of firms seeking to build the next best ‘mouse trap’. While it is critical that competition laws empower enforcers to protect the competitive process and prevent dominant players from foreclosing or preventing new competition from emerging, it is also important that the competition laws foster innovation by allowing firms to enjoy the fruits of competitive labour. This could be an established firm being able to effectively monetise a platform that a company has spent billions of dollars to build, or start-ups that have funded and developed great ideas but require collaboration from partnership or the capital and balance sheet of a potential acquirer to scale technology to the next level.
Peristerakis: There is a real risk that overregulation of digital markets may undermine technological innovation and discourage pro-competitive transactions. GenAI is often cited as an example and much of the most visible innovation has come from the US, which does not have an equivalent digital markets regime. That said, digital regulation is only one part of the picture. Innovation in the technology sector also depends heavily on broader structural conditions, including access to capital, the depth of venture financing and the existence of integrated markets. In Europe, the absence of a fully integrated market and the comparative weakness of the venture capital ecosystem may have more impact on innovation than the market power currently enjoyed by large technology firms. As for dealmaking, start-up acquisitions remain an important exit route for founders and investors. The key, therefore, is to ensure that merger control remains predictable, evidence-based and proportionate, so that harmful consolidation can be addressed without chilling legitimate investment and acquisition activity.
FW: Looking ahead, what key trends are likely to shape antitrust policy in the technology sector? Is a significant reform of European data law needed to support future regulation?
Peristerakis: The key trend likely to shape antitrust policy is the continued rise of AI. Both the EC and the CMA are likely to use a combination of digital markets regulation, antitrust enforcement and merger control to influence competitive conditions in this space. The EC has already shown a willingness to test the outer limits of both the DMA and article 102 of the TFEU in order to secure what it sees as a level playing field in emerging AI markets. In the UK, the development of bespoke conduct requirements under the DMCCA may result in obligations that are in some respects more restrictive than those imposed under the DMA. At the same time, overly interventionist conduct rules would sit uneasily with the CMA’s recently articulated ‘4Ps’ framework of proportionality, pace, predictability and process. On data law, meaningful reform is likely to become increasingly important if the EU is to support data-driven innovation, particularly in AI model training, while preserving proportionate safeguards. In that respect, efforts to streamline overlapping obligations under the General Data Protection Regulation, the AI Act and cyber security reporting rules are likely to remain central to the policy debate.
Rancour: If the last decade of enforcement can be interpreted as a prologue of what is to come, regulators are likely to continue to adapt their enforcement priorities in the technology sector toward products and platforms that emerge as critical contributors to business ecosystems and consumer services. Just as popular consumer-facing platform technology garnered substantial interest around so-called ‘gatekeepers’ over the last decade – with AI technology currently driving massive investment, growth of products that rely upon AI-based technology and models, and hardware, software and data centre infrastructure dedicated to deploying these capabilities – regulators will continue to examine and scrutinise how players with leading technology develop or expand competitive influence across these layers of the technology stack.
Nikolaos Peristerakis has more than 20 years of experience advising and representing clients in merger control and antitrust investigations before the European Commission. He has also handled the multijurisdictional merger clearance process for hundreds of public M&A, joint venture and private equity transactions. He has been recognised multiple times as a leading competition lawyer by Lexology (formerly Who’s Who Legal) and Legal 500. He can be contacted on +32 2 336 1934 or by email: nikolaos.peristerakis@klgates.com.
Joseph M. Rancour represents clients in connection with antitrust aspects of M&A, conduct investigations, counselling and litigation. He has broad antitrust experience across a variety of industries, including semiconductors, technology platforms, telecommunications, medical devices, life sciences, chemicals and financial exchanges. He regularly represents clients before the antitrust division of the DOJ and FTC. He has been named one of Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Global Antitrust & Competition Lawyers. He can be contacted on +1 (202) 371 7532 or by email: joseph.rancour@skadden.com.
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