FTC and 17 states sue Amazon on antitrust charges
The Federal Trade Commission has filed its long-anticipated antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.
In a sweeping complaint filed in federal court in Seattle on Tuesday, the FTC and attorneys general from 17 states accused Amazon of wielding its “monopoly power” to inflate prices, degrade quality for shoppers and unlawfully exclude rivals, thereby undermining competition.
Amazon shares slid as much as 3% in afternoon trading.
The agency laid out a two-pronged strategy by which Amazon “unlawfully maintains” its monopoly power. It pointed to so-called anti-discounting measures the company uses to punish sellers and deter other online retailers from offering lower, more competitive prices than Amazon, which translates to keeping prices higher for products across the internet, the FTC said.
Amazon also “effectively requires” that sellers use its “costly” fulfillment services in order to obtain the vaunted Prime badge for their products, the FTC said, which in turn makes it more expensive to do business on the platform. Sellers are paying $1 of every $2 to Amazon, FTC Chair Lina Khan told reporters at a briefing Tuesday.
The FTC and states alleged that Amazon forces sellers to pay expensive fulfillment and advertising fees to market their goods on the site, while facing no other choice “but to rely on Amazon to stay in business.” These tactics have degraded the shopping experience on Amazon by flooding search results with “pay to play ads” that steer shoppers toward more expensive and less relevant products, Khan said.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during the New York Times DealBook Summit in the Appel Room at the Jazz At Lincoln Center on November 30, 2022 in New York City.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images
“The upshot here is that Amazon is a monopolist and it’s exploiting its monopolies in ways that leave shoppers and sellers paying more for worse service,” Khan said at the briefing. “In a competitive world, a monopoly hiking prices and degrading service would create an opening for rivals and potential rivals to come in, draw business, grow and compete, but Amazon’s unlawful monopolistic strategy has closed off that possibility, and the public is paying directly as a result.”
David Zapolsky, Amazon’s general counsel and senior vice president of global public policy, said in a statement that the FTC’s complaint is “wrong on the facts and the law.”
“The practices the FTC is challenging have helped to spur competition and innovation across the retail industry, and have produced greater selection, lower prices, and faster delivery speeds for Amazon customers and greater opportunity for the many businesses that sell in Amazon’s store,” Zapolsky said. “If the FTC gets its way, the result would be fewer products to choose from, higher prices, slower deliveries for consumers, and reduced options for small businesses—the opposite of what antitrust law is designed to do.”
The FTC didn’t lay out potential remedies such as a breakup or divestitures in its announcement, saying it is primarily seeking to hold Amazon liable. In the complaint, the FTC and states called for the court to prevent Amazon from continuing the alleged unlawful behavior and order “structural relief” to the extent necessary to resolve the harm. Structural relief tends to refer to remedies like breakups and divestments, that alter the business itself, rather than simply order it to discontinue a certain behavior.
Often in antitrust cases, a judge will rule on whether a company is liable for the alleged violations first. Only at that point will a separate proceeding to determine the proper remedies occur, should there be a finding of liability.
The lawsuit is a major milestone for Khan, who rose to prominence for her 2017 Yale Law Journal note, “Amazon’s Antitrust Paradox.” Khan argued in the article that the prominent antitrust framework at the time failed to capture the true extent of Amazon’s dominance and potential harm to competition. Through her work at the FTC, Khan has sought to reset that framework and push the boundaries of antitrust law through risky legal battles.
Lina Khan, Chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission
Courtesy: FTC
Amazon sought Khan’s recusal from antitrust investigations into its business, arguing that her past writing and critiques showed she had prejudged the outcome of such probes.
The charges are the culmination of several years of pressure on federal enforcers to deal with what some competitors, sellers and lawmakers saw as anticompetitive practices. Amazon was one of four Big Tech companies investigated by the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, which found it held monopoly power over most of its third-party sellers and many suppliers. The majority Democratic staff at the time alleged that Amazon shored up “competitive moats” by acquiring rival sites like Diapers.com and Zappos.
At the time, an Amazon spokesperson said in a statement that “large companies are not dominant by definition, and the presumption that success can only be the result of anti-competitive behavior is simply wrong.”
Founded by Jeff Bezos in Seattle in 1994, Amazon has transformed from an online bookseller into a retail, advertising and cloud computing giant with a staggering market valuation of roughly $1.4 trillion. The company has sought to expand its dominance by entering verticals like health care, streaming and grocery, acquiring primary-care provider One Medical, legendary film and television studio MGM, and upscale supermarket chain Whole Foods.
Those moves have attracted intense regulatory scrutiny. The House subcommittee report also accused Amazon of abusing its position in online retail to harm third-party merchants who rely on the platform to sell goods, and alleged it uses “strong-arm tactics” to bully retail partners. The FTC is also reviewing Amazon’s planned $1.7 billion acquisition of Roomba maker iRobot on antitrust grounds. Amazon recently paid roughly $30 million to settle two privacy lawsuits brought by the FTC concerning its Ring doorbell and Alexa units. The agency followed up in June with a lawsuit accusing Amazon of tricking users into signing up for Prime, while making it too difficult for them to cancel.
Amazon’s marketplace has evolved into a linchpin of its e-commerce business. At the time of the marketplace’s launch in 2000, Amazon had already expanded beyond its origins as a bookseller to offering things like CDs and videos. But once it opened its doors to third-party sellers, it supercharged the number and variety of products for sale on its website, earning it the moniker “the everything store.”
The third-party marketplace has given Amazon access to a higher-margin business than just selling books. It has also increased the fees it charges sellers to do business on its site, run advertisements, and tap into its fulfillment and delivery services. In the first half of 2023, the company collected a 45% cut of every sale made by sellers in the U.S., up from 19% in 2014, according to the nonprofit Institute for Local Self Reliance. Sales from third-party sellers now comprise 60% of total units sold, the company recently disclosed.
Read the full complaint here:
Zscaler rings the opening bell at the Nasdaq exchange in New York, March 16, 2018.
Source: Nasdaq
Zscaler shares jumped 8% Friday after reporting stronger-than-expected results in the third fiscal quarter driven by artificial intelligence and widespread adoption of its zero-trust security platform.
“The proliferation of AI in all aspects of business is increasing the need for our AI security,” said CEO Jay Chaudhry in a release. “We empower customers to securely adopt both public GenAI apps and their own private AI apps, and we are increasing our investments in this area.”
The cloud security software company said revenues grew 23% to $678 million from about $553 million in the year-ago period. That topped the LSEG estimate of $666 million.
Zscaler reported adjusted earnings of 84 cents per share, topping the adjusted EPS of 75 cents per share expected by LSEG. Billings rose 25% to about $785 million, ahead of a $760 million estimate from StreetAccount.
Zscaler’s earnings come as a hopeful sign for a cybersecurity industry that has shown some pockets of weakness in a volatile macroeconomic environment. SentinelOne dropped after lowering its outlook, while Palo Alto Networks shares declined after missing on gross margin.
The report “echoes the strength we noted in our preview, and begins to prove out the reacceleration story that the company has been pointing to over the past few quarters,” wrote Morgan Stanley’s Keith Weiss.
Zscaler reported a net loss of $4.1 million, or a loss of 3 cents per share, for the quarter. Last year, net income came in at $19.1 million, or 12 cents per share.
The company issued upbeat adjusted EPS guidance for the fiscal fourth quarter. Zscaler expects adjusted earnings to range between 79 cents and 80 cents a share, versus the 77 cents expected by LSEG.
Along with its earnings, Zscaler appointed Kevin Rubin as its chief financial officer.
WATCH: Zscaler CEO Jay Chaudhry weighs in on China hacking the U.S. Treasury
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, is seen through glass during an event on the sidelines of the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris, Feb. 11, 2025.
Aurelien Morissard | Via Reuters
Elon Musk tried to derail a major artificial intelligence infrastructure deal in the Middle East after learning that his startup, xAI, would be excluded from the initiative, CNBC has confirmed.
Earlier this month, OpenAI, Oracle, Nvidia, Cisco and Emirati firm G42 announced plans to build a sweeping Stargate AI campus in the United Arab Emirates. Musk was frustrated that OpenAI, led by personal rival Sam Altman, was tapped for the deal, and he intervened in an effort to get xAI involved, said a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named in order to speak freely.
Musk argued that President Donald Trump would not approve the deal, the person said. The announcement was delayed by several days as stakeholders, including the White House, dealt with blowback from Musk, who has been engaged in a public and legal spat with Altman and OpenAI.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that Musk attempted to block the deal.
In a statement to CNBC, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt didn’t mention the dustup.
“The United States and the UAE signed a groundbreaking framework agreement establishing the first AI acceleration partnership,” Leavitt said. “The framework advances the buildout of AI infrastructure in the United States and the UAE. This was another great deal for the American people, thanks to President Trump and his exceptional team.”
Musk wasn’t in the UAE when the deal was signed, but was with the president in Saudi Arabia during an earlier part of the Middle East trip, according to a senior White House official. The official said Musk has relayed his concerns about the government fairly treating all AI companies.
OpenAI declined to comment. Musk didn’t respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is a complicating character in Trump’s effort to solidify U.S. leadership in AI. Musk spent close to $300 million to send President Trump back to the White House, and has since been leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), slashing the size of the federal workforce. His time as a special government employee is coming to an end this month.
When it comes to AI, Musk has in recent years been a vocal critic of Altman, a former friend and colleague. The pair helped form OpenAI as a research lab in 2015, but Musk later had a public break with the project and has consistently criticized its structure and close alliance with Microsoft.
While xAI has been building its commercial efforts, acquiring Musk’s social media company X in March and this week partnering with Telegram to roll out its Grok chatbot, Musk has been trying to thwart OpenAI’s effort to convert into a for-profit entity.
Musk has sued OpenAI for breach of contract and to try and stop the conversion, and a Musk-led investor group made an unsuccessful bid to buy control of the startup for $97.4 billion in February.
It’s also not the first time Musk has been critical of Stargate.
In January, Trump unveiled the Stargate project, with OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank committing an initial $100 billion, and up to $500 billion, of investment in AI infrastructure in the U.S. over four years. Musk was quick to cast doubt on the financing behind the project.
“They don’t actually have the money,” Musk wrote in response to an OpenAI post on his social platform X. He later added that SoftBank had “well under” $10 billion secured.
Two months later, SoftBank led a $40 billion investment in OpenAI at a $300 billion valuation.
— CNBC’s Eamon Javers contributed to this report.
WATCH: Elon Musk tried to block Sam Altman’s big AI deal in the UAE
A Dell Technologies sign is seen in Round Rock, Texas, on June 2, 2023.
Brandon Bell | Getty Images
Shares of Dell Technologies rose on Thursday in extended trading after the company raised its full-year earnings forecast and issued a stronger-than-expected forecast for the current quarter.
However, Dell’s adjusted earnings per share came up short versus LSEG estimates on in-line revenue.
Here’s how the computer maker did versus LSEG consensus estimates:
- Earnings per share: $1.55 adjusted vs. $1.69 estimated
- Revenue: $23.38 billion vs. $23.14 billion estimated
Dell said it expects $2.25 in adjusted earnings per share for the current quarter, with between $28.5 billion and $29.5 billion in revenue. That was significantly higher than LSEG expectations.
Company officials attributed the strong guidance to $7 billion in artificial intelligence systems that are expected to ship during the quarter, which are higher-margin than other Dell systems.
For the full year, Dell still expects about $103 billion in revenue, in line with LSEG expectations, but it raised its forecast for full-year adjusted earnings to $9.40, which was a 10 cent increase from the company’s prior outlook.
Dell is one of Nvidia’s primary vendors that builds systems around the chipmaker’s AI graphics processing units. Dell said on Thursday that it was seeing “unprecedented demand” for AI systems, especially for second-tier cloud providers, such as Coreweave.
Texas-based Dell said that it has $14.4 billion in confirmed orders for AI systems in its backlog that will ship in the coming quarters. It recorded $12.1 billion in confirmed AI orders during the first quarter, the company said. These numbers will turn into recorded revenue when Dell ships the system to its clients. In February, Dell said it expected $15 billion in AI server sales during its fiscal 2026, up from $10 billion last year.
Overall, Dell’s revenue grew 5% on an annual basis. It said it expects revenue to grow 8% during the fiscal year.
Dell’s server business is reported as part of its Infrastructure Solutions Group, which had $10.3 billion in sales during the quarter, a 12% rise. Of that, $6.3 billion was sales for servers and networking, and $4 billion was for computers that store data.
The company’s laptop and PC business, its Client Solutions Group, recorded $12.5 billion in sales as the global PC market is expected to recover this year after several slumping years.
The computer maker also said it significantly stepped up its shareholder capital return during the quarter, spending $2.4 billion on share repurchases and dividends during the period. It spent $2.58 billion on share repurchases for all of its fiscal 2025, which ended in January.
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports1 year agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports2 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment2 years agoGame-changing Lectric XPedition launched as affordable electric cargo bike
-
Business3 years agoBank of England’s extraordinary response to government policy is almost unthinkable | Ed Conway