Republican FTC Commissioner Wilson announces resignation, saying Chair Khan has a ‘disregard for the rule of law’
Christine Wilson, nominee to serve on the Federal Trade Commission, testifies during a Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee confirmation hearing in Hart Building on February 14, 2018.
Tom Williams | Cq-roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images
Christine Wilson, the sole remaining Republican on the Federal Trade Commission, announced Tuesday she plans to resign, citing what she said was Democratic Chair Lina Khan’s “disregard for the rule of law and due process.”
Wilson announced her resignation, which she said will come “soon,” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. Throughout Khan’s tenure at the helm of the commission, Wilson has frequently bemoaned her approach in remarks at public meetings and in speeches.
Wilson wrote in her op-ed that she has failed “to persuade Ms. Khan and her enablers to do the right thing, and I refuse to give their endeavor any further hint of legitimacy by remaining.”
Khan, who has been one of the most prominent figures of the progressive antitrust movement, has advocated for a more expansive approach to enforcement, including by pursuing risky cases with the potential to push the bounds of current case law. That approach has made her unpopular with more conservative antitrust thinkers, including Wilson.
Khan’s approach has come with risk, as most recently evidenced by the FTC’s failure in court to block Meta’s proposed acquisition of VR fitness app developer Within Unlimited. But those who support Khan tend to argue that if regulators win all their cases, they’re likely not bringing enough of them.
Wilson criticized the fact that Khan had not recused herself from an administrative proceeding on the Meta-Within deal based on her statements before joining the agency advocating for keeping the company from making future acquisitions. Wilson also admonished the two other commissioners, who supported her decision. The FTC ended up dropping the administrative proceeding anyway after failing to win a preliminary injunction in federal court.
Wilson said she also objected to the heavy redactions on her statement opposing Khan’s decision not to recuse, saying it did not contain any confidential business information and the redactions “served no purpose but to protect Ms. Khan from embarrassment.”
Wilson also took issue with other decisions by Khan, like the rulemaking seeking to ban most noncompete clauses, which Wilson claimed oversteps the agency’s authority. She also argued that in the absence of Congress passing legislation to restrict mergers, Khan “does so by fiat.”
“Abuse of regulatory authority now substitutes for unfulfilled legislative desires,” Wilson wrote.
Without Wilson, the FTC will have three remaining members of what is usually a five-member panel: Khan and Democrats Rebecca Kelly Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya. Former Commissioner Noah Joshua Phillips, a Republican, resigned in October, but without the kind of broad critique that Wilson wrote. Phillips thanked Khan in his public note leaving the commission, though he too has criticized some of the measures she has pursued in the past.
The vacancy means President Joe Biden now has the opportunity to nominate two commissioners, though neither can be Democrats, since only three commissioners are allowed to be from the same party at a given time.
“While we often disagreed with Commissioner Wilson, we respect her devotion to her beliefs and are grateful for her public service,” Khan, Slaughter and Bedoya wrote in a joint statement. “We wish her well in her next endeavor.”
Chief executive officer of Google Sundar Pichai.
Marek Antoni Iwanczuk | Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images
Google on Friday made the latest a splash in the AI talent wars, announcing an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence coding startup Windsurf.
As part of the deal, Google will also hire other senior Windsurf research and development employees. Google is not investing in Windsurf, but the search giant will take a nonexclusive license to certain Windsurf technology, according to a person familiar with the matter. Windsurf remains free to license its technology to others.
“We’re excited to welcome some top AI coding talent from Windsurf’s team to Google DeepMind to advance our work in agentic coding,” a Google spokesperson wrote in an email. “We’re excited to continue bringing the benefits of Gemini to software developers everywhere.”
The deal between Google and Windsurf comes after the AI coding startup had been in talks with OpenAI for a $3 billion acquisition deal, CNBC reported in April. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The move ratchets up the talent war in AI particularly among prominent companies. Meta has made lucrative job offers to several employees at OpenAI in recent weeks. Most notably, the Facebook parent added Scale AI founder Alexandr Wang to lead its AI strategy as part of a $14.3 billion investment into his startup.
Douglas Chen, another Windsurf co-founder, will be among those joining Google in the deal, Jeff Wang, the startup’s new interim CEO and its head of business for the past two years, wrote in a post on X.
“Most of Windsurf’s world-class team will continue to build the Windsurf product with the goal of maximizing its impact in the enterprise,” Wang wrote.
Windsurf has become more popular this year as an option for so-called vibe coding, which is the process of using new age AI tools to write code. Developers and non-developers have embraced the concept, leading to more revenue for Windsurf and competitors, such as Cursor, which OpenAI also looked at buying. All the interest has led investors to assign higher valuations to the startups.
This isn’t the first time Google has hired select people out of a startup. It did the same with Character.AI last summer. Amazon and Microsoft have also absorbed AI talent in this fashion, with the Adept and Inflection deals, respectively.
Microsoft is pushing an agent mode in its Visual Studio Code editor for vibe coding. In April, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is composing as much of 30% of his company’s code.
The Verge reported the Google-Windsurf deal earlier on Friday.
Technology
Nvidia’s Jensen Huang sells more than $36 million in stock, catches Warren Buffett in net worth
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, holds a motherboard as he speaks during the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at Porte de Versailles exhibition center in Paris, France, on June 11, 2025.
Gonzalo Fuentes | Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang unloaded roughly $36.4 million worth of stock in the leading artificial intelligence chipmaker, according to a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
The sale, which totals 225,000 shares, comes as part of Huang’s previously adopted plan in March to unload up to 6 million shares of Nvidia through the end of the year. He sold his first batch of stock from the agreement in June, equaling about $15 million.
Last year, the tech executive sold about $700 million worth of shares as part of a prearranged plan. Nvidia stock climbed about 1% Friday.
Huang’s net worth has skyrocketed as investors bet on Nvidia’s AI dominance and graphics processing units powering large language models.
The 62-year-old’s wealth has grown by more than a quarter, or about $29 billion, since the start of 2025 alone, based on Bloomberg’s Billionaires Index. His net worth last stood at $143 billion in the index, putting him neck-and-neck with Berkshire Hathaway‘s Warren Buffett at $144 billion.
Shortly after the market opened Friday, Fortune‘s analysis of net worth had Huang ahead of Buffett, with the Nvidia CEO at $143.7 billion and the Oracle of Omaha at $142.1 billion.
The company has also achieved its own notable milestones this year, as it prospers off the AI boom.
On Wednesday, the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker became the first company to top a $4 trillion market capitalization, beating out both Microsoft and Apple. The chipmaker closed above that milestone Thursday as CNBC reported that the technology titan met with President Donald Trump.
Brooke Seawell, venture partner at New Enterprise Associates, sold about $24 million worth of Nvidia shares, according to an SEC filing. Seawell has been on the company’s board since 1997, according to the company.
Huang still holds more than 858 million shares of Nvidia, both directly and indirectly, in different partnerships and trusts.
WATCH: Nvidia hits $4 trillion in market cap milestone despite curbs on chip exports
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