Amazon and the Federal Trade Commission are squaring off in a long-awaited trial over whether the company duped users into paying for Prime memberships.

The lawsuit, filed by the FTC in June 2023 under the Biden administration, alleges that Amazon deceived tens of millions of customers into signing up for its Prime subscription program and sabotaged their attempts to cancel it. Amazon has denied any wrongdoing.

The trial is being held in a federal court in Seattle, Amazon’s backyard. Jury selection began Monday and opening arguments are slated for Tuesday, with the trial expected to last about a month.

Launched in 2005, Amazon’s Prime program has grown to become one of the most popular subscription services in the world, with more than 200 million members globally, and it has generated billions of dollars for the company. Membership costs $139 a year and includes perks like free shipping and access to streaming content. Data has shown that Prime members spend more and shop more often than non-Prime members.

Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos famously said the company wanted Prime “to be such a good value, you’d be irresponsible not to be a member.”

Regulators argue that Amazon broke competition and consumer protection laws by tricking customers into subscribing to Prime. They pointed to examples like a button on its site that instructed users to complete their transaction and did not clearly state they were also agreeing to join Prime for a recurring subscription.

“Millions of consumers accidentally enrolled in Prime without knowledge or consent, but Amazon refused to fix this known problem, described internally by employees as an ‘unspoken cancer’ because clarity adjustments would lead to a drop in subscribers,” the agency wrote in a court filing last week.

The FTC says that the cancellation process is equally confusing, requiring users to navigate four webpages and choose from 15 options — a “labyrinthian mechanism” that the company referred to internally as “Iliad,” referencing Homer’s epic poem about the Trojan War.

Amazon has argued that the Prime sign up and cancellation processes are “clear and simple,” adding that the company has “always been transparent about Prime’s terms.”

“Occasional customer frustrations and mistakes are inevitable — especially for a program as popular as Amazon Prime,” the company wrote in a recent court filing. “Evidence that a small percentage of customers misunderstood Prime enrollment or cancellation does not prove that Amazon violated the law.”

The FTC notched an early win in the case last week when U.S. District Court Judge John Chun ruled Amazon and two senior executives violated the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act by gathering Prime members’ billing information before disclosing the terms of the service.

Chun also said that the two senior Amazon executives would be individually liable if a jury sides with the FTC due to the level of oversight they maintained over the Prime enrollment and cancellation process.

Amazon’s Prime boss Jamil Ghani and Neil Lindsay, a senior vice president in its health division who previously oversaw Prime’s technology and business operations, are named defendants in the complaint.

Russell Grandinetti, Amazon senior vice president of international consumer, is also named in the suit, but Chun argued he had “less involvement in the operation of the Prime organization” compared to Ghani and Lindsay.

Chun also scolded attorneys for Amazon in July for withholding thousands of documents from the FTC and abusing a legal privilege to shield them from scrutiny. Among the documents was a 2020 email where Amazon’s retail chief Doug Herrington said “subscription driving” was a “shady” practice and referred to Bezos as the company’s “chief dark arts officer.”

Representatives from Amazon didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon also faces a separate lawsuit brought by the FTC in 2023 accusing it of wielding an illegal monopoly. That case is set to go to trial in February 2027.

The Prime case is part of the FTC’s broader crackdown on so-called “dark patterns,” which it began examining in 2022. The phrase refers to deceptive design tactics meant to steer users toward buying products or services or giving up their privacy.

The agency brought a similar dark patterns lawsuit against Uber in April, accusing the ride-hailing and delivery company of deceptive billing and cancellation practices tied to its Uber One subscription service. Uber has disputed the FTC’s allegations.

Earlier this year, it reached settlements with online dating service Match and online education firm Chegg over claims that their subscription practices were deceptive or hard to cancel.

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U.S. President Donald Trump’s plans to place $100,000 fees on H-1B visa applications will disproportionately harm America’s startup space, founders and venture capitalists told CNBC this week.

H-1B visas — which allow companies to temporarily hire foreign workers in skilled occupations such as IT, healthcare and engineering — were already difficult to secure for U.S. startups, due to limited annual quotas. 

Over the past year, Desmond Lim, CEO and co-founder of HR, payroll and hiring tech platform Workstream, said all of his startup’s H1-B applications had been rejected — something he called “very disappointing” as he tries to secure more top engineering talent.

The year prior, however, Workstream did secure a couple of H-1B hires that Lim told CNBC were “life changing, both for the employees and for the company.”

“As an early-stage startup, every hire is precious, and we only choose the best to go through the H-1B program, because it not only costs money, but also takes time,” he added. 

Now, securing this talent is set to become even harder. The White House plans to require companies to pay a $100,000 fee when submitting petitions for new H-1B visas, though many details remain unclear.

Lim said the fee would be too high to justify for early-stage companies like his, complicating recruitment strategies.

A 2020 survey found that startups hiring workers through the H-1B visa process were associated with an increase in the likelihood of obtaining external funding, going public or being acquired, and of making innovative breakthroughs.

Now, the new fee could “dampen PE and VC appetite for early-stage U.S. names that rely heavily on H-1B workers, many of whom may now look abroad to secure their careers rather than risk further uncertainty in the U.S.,” Crossbridge Capital’s Chief Investment Officer Manish Singh told CNBC in an email Monday. 

Singh added that changes to the visa program could instead create a stronger case for investors to deploy capital into markets such as the U.K., Canada and Europe. 

“U.S. startups may experience reduced funding momentum, while Europe could see a relative uplift in both talent inflows and investor attention,” he added. 

Many markets, including in Europe, have been reporting problems with “brain-drain” in recent years, referring to a phenomenon where skilled and educated workers emigrate to seek better opportunities in countries such as the U.S. 

This movement is often associated with the development of high-skilled industries and entrepreneurship in the receiving country.

Now, uncertainty surrounding U.S. immigration, including the H-1 B development, could be a real turning point for tech talent that has been on the fence about moving to the U.S., said Laura Willming, head of people and talent at Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s most active venture capital investors. 

Talented individuals who once saw the U.S. as the obvious destination are now seriously considering other markets, such as the U.K. and Europe, to build their careers, she added.

— CNBC’s Hugh Leask and Ernestine Siu contributed to this report

Major global semiconductor stocks rose on Tuesday after Nvidia announced plans to invest $100 billion in OpenAI.

The deal between Nvidia and OpenAI is on a large scale. OpenAI plans to build and deploy Nvidia systems that require 10 gigawatts of power, which is equivalent to 4 million and 5 million graphics processing units (GPUs), according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.

The news sparked a rally on Wall Street, with positive sentiment flowing through to the global chip sector and especially touching companies with ties to Nvidia.

In Taiwan, shares of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which manufactures chips for Nvidia, closed 3.5% higher.

In South Korea, SK Hynix, whose memory chips are used in Nvidia’s systems, saw its shares end the session more than 2.5% higher. Rival Samsung also closed 1.4% higher. Samsung does not yet supply Nvidia with its high-bandwidth memory chips, but markets are hoping that the company will gain the green light to do so imminently.

Equipment suppliers, such as Tokyo Electron which is listed in Japan, was also higher at the close of trade in the country.

“Ultimately this is a broad market with lots of suppliers. It certainly isn’t a zero-sum game with only one winner, and indeed it appears investors are recognising that,” Ben Barringer, global technology analyst at Quilter Cheviot, told CNBC.

“While this deal may be negative in the short-term for Nvidia’s competitors, it is a sign that the AI trade is a alive and well.”

The chip stock rally in Asia filtered through to Europe, where the picture was nevertheless a little more mixed.

STMicro, Infineon and BE Semiconductor were all higher in early trade in Europe.

However, semiconductor equipment firm ASM International said it expected its fourth-quarter revenue to come in below previous expectations, sharply weighing on shares. The news also dragged down other chip equipment names such as ASML, whose machines are required to manufacture the most advanced semiconductors in the world.

“In Europe, the strengthening of the AI ecosystem is particularly beneficial to equipment manufacturers” including ASML and ASMI, “which will all benefit at some point from solid demand from TSMC who is the manufacturer of NVIDIA advanced chips,” Stephane Houri, head of equity research at ODDO BHF, said in a note to clients on Tuesday.