Tech antitrust in 2026: what the rulings actually change

The FTC is asking at least half a dozen companies that compete with Microsoft for documents. The Verge obtained previously unreported details of the civil investigative demands (CIDs). The questions focus on whether Microsoft used unfair methods of competition in its cloud, software products and related services, in violation of the FTC Act.

What the FTC wants to know

The documents generally run more than 15 pages with over 15 questions, often with extensive sub-parts. They ask about organisational charts, business and marketing plans, product roadmaps, bundling of multiple features and products, pricing, discounting and profitability. Other questions probe how hard it is to enter or expand in markets where Microsoft operates. They ask about costs and barriers to entry.

The CIDs also ask specifically about Microsoft's impact on competition, soliciting documents about its policies or market position, plus details on industry bundling and interoperability practices. Similar questions appear about competition around AI products, including competing for customers against businesses that combine extra features or services with an AI or software product like Microsoft 365.

George Washington University law professor and former FTC Chair William Kovacic told The Verge that this kind of information gathering tends to happen at the earlier stages of an investigation. The questions, he said, suggest the agency is trying to work out which key market players to watch and how important tactics like bundling are. The references to AI could mean the FTC sees it as a potential part of an illegal tying arrangement or as an important competitive advantage.

Microsoft spokesperson Alex Haurek says the company is "cooperating fully with the FTC and believe our practices promote competition while delivering the innovative products our customers expect."

Haurek also pointed to Google as "a clear example of that dynamic, growing 63% year over year and competing head-to-head with other major providers including AWS, the largest cloud provider." The Verge notes that customers, often speaking anonymously for fear of retaliation, have complained that Microsoft's 2019 licensing changes made it significantly more costly to run Windows software outside Azure. In 2023, Google told the FTC in response to a broad cloud inquiry that Microsoft used dominance in other areas to "give their own cloud products an unearned advantage."

There is no guarantee the investigation ends in a legal complaint. The probe began under the Biden administration in 2024 and continued under President Donald Trump. After further investigative steps, FTC staff will decide whether to recommend filing a complaint, and the agency's two commissioners will vote. Both are Republicans. The Verge notes there are no minority party commissioners to object or publicise a decision to close the case quietly.

The Google search remedy phase

The Microsoft probe is not happening in isolation. Google has already lost the liability phase of its search antitrust trial, with the court finding it violated the Sherman Antitrust Act by "willfully acquiring and maintaining monopoly power." As Ars Technica reported on 22 April 2025, the remedy phase opened with the US Department of Justice seeking to force the divestiture of Chrome, the unbundling of Android and other structural changes.

The DOJ argued that Google's handling of Chrome creates a barrier to competition by preferencing its own services. It also targeted the search placement deals that pay Apple and Mozilla billions of dollars a year to make Google the default search engine, and it wanted those contracts banned alongside a Chrome sale. Google's own proposed remedies, announced before the trial, amounted to less exclusivity in search contracts and more freedom for Android OEMs to choose app preloads, plus additional government oversight.

Google's defence leaned on the argument that the DOJ's position was too extreme and rooted in past grievances, and it lined up Mozilla and Apple to testify that Google's services are the best available. The DOJ's likely counter: the revenue those companies receive from the deals makes their testimony less reliable. Ars Technica also reported that the DOJ sees this as the most consequential US antitrust case since the Microsoft trial of the 1990s.

Nvidia in Beijing, AI labs in court

Outside the US, China's State Administration for Market Regulation found in September 2025 that Nvidia violated the country's antitrust law, a preliminary finding tied to its 2020 acquisition of Mellanox Technologies. Ars Technica reported that Nvidia failed to fully comply with the conditions Beijing attached when it conditionally approved the $6.9 billion deal.

SAMR had started the anti-monopoly investigation in December, a week after the US unveiled tougher export controls on advanced high-bandwidth memory chips and chipmaking equipment. Two people with knowledge of the matter told Ars Technica that the regulator reached its conclusion weeks before the announcement and released it then to give China greater leverage in trade talks in Madrid. The preliminary findings could result in fines of between 1 percent and 10 percent of Nvidia's previous year's sales, and regulators can force changes to business practices.

A different kind of case is running in US courts. Tom's Hardware reported on 21 September 2026 that four plaintiffs subscribed to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini filed a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging that the developers of those models violated antitrust laws when they agreed to slow AI development. According to the Associated Press, the suit argues the agreement would "reduce the value consumers get for paid AI subscriptions" and that coordination started in July 2026 after the leading AI labs signed a statement admitting there is "intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow" development.

The plaintiffs accept the safety case for slowing development but call Anthropic founder Dario Amodei's cooperation proposal a "shortcut" that "substitutes collective restraint for individual accountability." Lead counsel Nick Rowley said: "AI will quickly spin out of human control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol … to be controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world's most powerful 'for profit' technology companies."

OpenAI's Sam Altman responded on X, saying, "We welcome a federal framework that sets consistent safety requirements for frontier AI. But we do not believe we need to wait for an antitrust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this confidence." The Trump administration rejected the idea, with the president saying, "AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX." Chinese state media also criticised the proposal; China Daily called it a "club whose membership rules have been drafted before the guest list is announced."

Why the politics look strange

Enforcement has also become a Washington spectacle. The Verge's account of Y Combinator's Little Tech Summit in May 2025 described Steve Bannon appearing on stage with former CFPB director Rohit Chopra, FTC chair Andrew Ferguson introduced with an AI-generated Ghibli-style avatar, and FTC and DOJ antitrust officials skipping the American Bar Association's spring antitrust meeting across the street. Lina Khan, Ferguson's progressive predecessor, attacked Trump for firing two Democratic FTC commissioners and then posed for a photo with Bannon.

Luther Lowe, head of public policy at Y Combinator, told The Verge that "supporting innovation and fair competition can unite people from across the political spectrum." The subtext was less idealistic: MAGA politics now shapes how antitrust cases are framed, and companies have to navigate that. For Microsoft, the immediate question is narrower. The FTC has to decide whether the evidence from those CIDs justifies a complaint, and two commissioners have to vote on it.