This photo illustration created on January 7, 2025, in Washington, DC, shows an image of Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, and an image of the Meta logo.
Drew Angerer | Afp | Getty Images
Meta will face off against the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on Monday in a high-stakes antitrust trial that could result in the company divesting Instagram and WhatsApp.
The trial in Washington is expected to last weeks and centers around the FTC’s allegations that Meta monopolizes the personal social networking market. CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former COO Sheryl Sandberg, Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom and other current and former Meta executives are expected to testify, along with top brass from rivals TikTok, Snap and Google’s YouTube, according to a legal filing.
The FTC claims Meta shouldn’t have been allowed to buy Instagram for $1 billion in 2012 and WhatsApp for $19 billion in 2014, and the agency is calling for those units to be sliced off from the Menlo Park, California, company.
“Acquiring these competitive threats has enabled Facebook to sustain its dominance—to the detriment of competition and users—not by competing on the merits, but by avoiding competition,” the FTC said in a legal filing.
Meta disagrees and filed a pretrial brief last week reiterating its arguments that it is not a monopoly and that acquiring Instagram and WhatsApp has not harmed competition.
The trial will test the boundaries of the U.S.’s antitrust laws pertaining to corporate acquisitions, said Prasad Krishnamurthy, a law professor at U.C. Berkeley Law. The FTC will have to prove that not only did Meta monopolize the social media market but that its acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp actively “harmed competition.”
“It’s a big case because it involves Meta, a social media giant, and it involves one of the most important kind of markets in the world, the social media market,” Krishnamurthy said. “It has big implications for something that consumers use as part of their daily life, Instagram and WhatsApp.”
Judge James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the Federal District Court in DC, stands for a portrait at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, DC on March 16, 2023.
Carolyn Van Houten | The Washington Post | Getty Images
The lead up to the trial
The FTC filed its antitrust case against Meta in 2020, but judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court in Washington dismissed the case in 2021, saying the agency did not have enough evidence to prove “Facebook holds market power.”
Despite the dismissal, the FTC in August 2021 filed an amended complaint with more details about the company’s user numbers and metrics relative to competitors like Snapchat, the now-defunct Google+ social network and Myspace. After reviewing the amendments, Boasberg in 2022 ruled that the case could proceed, saying the FTC had presented more details than before.
“Although the agency may well face a tall task down the road in proving its allegations, the Court believes that it has now cleared the pleading bar and may proceed to discovery,” Boasberg wrote.
Meta motioned to end the case last April, but Boasberg denied it, ruling in November that the company must face trial. In a small victory for Meta, however, Boasberg did dismiss the FTC’s allegation that Facebook restricted third-party app developers’ access to its platform to maintain market dominance.
The company is expected to push back on the rest of the FTC’s allegations at trial on Monday. In a recent pre-trial brief, Meta’s lawyers wrote that the FTC fails to acknowledge that the company competes with numerous rivals, including TikTok, YouTube and Apple’s iMessage.
But the FTC’s core argument is that the company has monopolized the specific market of personal social networking, saying there are no major alternatives to Meta’s apps like Facebook and Instagram, which are used by people to stay up to date and communicate with friends and family in an online, shared-social space.
This disputed notion of the market that Meta operates and competes in could be crucial to the case’s outcome, Krishnamurthy said.
“When you look at antitrust cases, the market definition that comes out of the case, even what ends up being the one that determines the ruling, is often not anything remotely like how lay people or even businesses in that market will describe it,” Krishnamurthy said.
Andrew Ferguson, Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, speaks at a fireside chat at Harvard University’s second annual Conservative and Republican Student Conference 2025 at The Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S., Feb. 8, 2025.
Sophie Park | Reuters
What happens now
The case kicks off Monday and is expected to last several weeks, and it could be months before Boasberg issues a ruling. It’s also unclear how the change of power in Washington could impact the case.
After being inaugurated in January, President Donald Trump replaced FTC Chair Lina Khan with Andrew Ferguson. Khan served as chair of the commission under former President Joe Biden and earned a reputation for being tough on businesses.
With the tech industry in particular, Khan brought an antitrust case against Amazon in 2023 and unsuccessfully sued to block Meta, Nvidia and Microsoft’s acquisitions of virtual reality startup Within, chip-design giant Arm and Activision Blizzard, respectively.
Though this case kicked off during Trump’s first time in office, Khan continued to pursue it during the Biden administration, telling a House Committee in May 2024 that the lawsuit “highlights the competitive importance of data and notes that privacy degradation can constitute an antitrust harm.”
Some legal experts have said that Trump’s pick of Ferguson could mean the FTC eases up on antitrust enforcement.
Khan told CNBC’s “Squawk Box” in early Jan. that she hopes the new Trump Administration won’t give Meta a “sweetheart deal” in the FTC case after Zuckerberg’s overtures to the White House.
Ferguson, however, has not indicated that the FTC plans to abandon its case, and in March, he told CNBC that his team has a “trial coming up” and that they are “pressing toward that.”
“My job is to make sure that everyone is complying with the antitrust laws,” Ferguson said. “And if they aren’t, we go to court.”
Ferguson is painting himself as an independent and is proceeding with trial outside of the broader political world, said George Hay, an antitrust law professor at Cornell Law School. Hay added that he’s pleased that Ferguson appears to be moving forward with the case despite much of its progress occurring during the Biden Administration.
“When you come in to the FTC, you inherit a staff of professionals who’ve been doing a lot of work, and it’s not that easy just to say, ‘Throw it all away,'” Hay said.
The Hers app arranged on a smartphone in New York, US, on Wednesday, Feb. 12, 2025.
Gabby Jones | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Shares of Hims & Hers Health fell 9% in extended trading on Monday after the telehealth company reported second-quarter results that missed Wall Street’s expectations for revenue.
Here’s how the company did based on average analysts’ estimates compiled by LSEG:
Earnings per share: 17 cents adjusted vs. 15 cents
Revenue: $544.8 million vs. $552 million
Revenue at Hims & Hers increased 73% in the second quarter from $315.6 million during the same period last year, according to a release. Hims & Hers reported a net income of $42.5 million, or 17 cents per share, compared to $13.3 million, or 6 cents per share, during the same period a year earlier.
For its third quarter, Hims & Hers said it expected to report revenue between $570 million to $590 million, while analysts were expecting $583 million. The company said its adjusted EBITDA for the quarter will be between the range of $60 million to $70 million. Analysts polled by StreetAccount were expecting $77.1 million.
Read more CNBC tech news
Hims & Hers has faced controversy in recent months over its continued sale of compounded GLP-1s, which are cheaper, unapproved versions of the blockbuster diabetes and weight loss drugs. Compounded drugs can be mass produced when brand-name treatments are in shortage, but the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced in February that ongoing supply issues had been resolved.
Some telehealth companies, including Hims & Hers, have continued to offer the compounded medications. It’s legal for patients to access personalized doses of the knockoffs in unique cases, like if they are allergic to an ingredient in a branded product, for instance. Hims & Hers has said consumers may still be able to access personalized doses through its site if clinically applicable.
In June, Hims & Hers shares tumbled more than 30% after a short-lived collaboration with Novo Nordisk fell apart. The drugmaker said Hims & Hers “failed to adhere to the law which prohibits mass sales of compounded drugs” under the “false guise” of personalization.
Hims & Hers reported adjusted EBITDA of $82 million for its second quarter, up from $39.3 million last year and above the $73 million expected by StreetAccount.
Hims & Hers will host its quarterly call with investors at 5 p.m. ET.
Stock Chart IconStock chart icon
YTD chart of Hims & Hers Health.
–CNBC’s Annika Kim Constantino contributed to this report
Palantir topped Wall Street’s estimates Monday, surpassing $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time, and hiking its full-year guidance.
Shares rallied more than 5%.
Here’s how the company did versus LSEG estimates:
Earnings per share: 16 cents adj. vs. 14 cents expected
Revenue: $1.00 billion vs. $940 million expected
The artificial intelligence software provider’s revenues grew 48% during the period. Analysts hadn’t expected the $1 billion revenue benchmark from the Denver-based company until the fourth quarter of this year.
“The growth rate of our business has accelerated radically, after years of investment on our part and derision by some,” wrote CEO Alex Karp in a letter to shareholders. “The skeptics are admittedly fewer now, having been defanged and bent into a kind of submission.”
The software analytics company also boosted its full-year outlook guidance. For the full year, Palantir now expects revenues to range between $4.142 billion and $4.150 billion, up from prior guidance of $3.89 billion to $3.90 billion.
Read more CNBC tech news
For the third quarter, Palantir forecast revenues between $1.083 billion and $1.087 billion, beating an analyst estimate of $983 million. Palantir also lifted its operating income and full-year free cash flow guidance.
Palantir’s U.S. revenues jumped 68% from a year ago to $733 million, while U.S. commercial revenues nearly doubled from a year ago to $306 million.
The software analytics company has seen a boost from President Donald Trump‘s government efficiency campaign, which included layoffs and contract cuts. Palantir’s U.S. government revenues jumped 53% from the year-ago period to $426 million.
“It has been a steep and upward climb — an ascent that is a reflection of the remarkable confluence of the arrival of language models, the chips necessary to power them, and our software infrastructure,” Karp wrote in a letter to shareholders.
During the quarter, Palantir said it closed 66 deals of at least $5 million and 42 deals totaling at least $10 million. Total value of its contracts grew 140% from last year to $2.27 billion.
Net income rose 144% to about $326.7 million, or 13 cents a share, from about $134.1 million, or 6 cents per share a year ago.
Palantir shares have more than doubled this year as investors bet on the company’s AI tools and contract agreements with governments.
Its market value has accelerated past $379 billion and into the list of top 20 most valuable U.S companies, surpassing Salesforce, IBM and Cisco to join the top 10 U.S. tech companies by market cap. Shares hit a new high Monday.
At its size, buying the stock requires investors to pay hefty multiples.
Shares currently trade 276 times forward earnings, according to FactSet. Tesla is the only other top 20 with a triple-digit ratio at 177.
Firefly Aerospace CEO Jason Kim sits for an interview at the Firefly Aerospace mission operations center in Leander, Texas, on July 9, 2025.
Sergio Flores | Reuters
Firefly Aerospace has lifted the share price range for its upcoming initial public offering in a move that would value the space technology company at more than $6 billion.
The lunar lander and rocket maker said in a filing Monday that it expects to price shares in its upcoming IPO between $41 and $43 apiece.
Firefly’s new target range would raise nearly $697 million at the top end of the range. That’s up from the previously expected $35 to $39 price per share that Firefly announced in a filing last week, which targeted a $5.5 billion valuation.
Firefly announced plans to go public last month as interest in space technology gains steam, and billionaire-led companies such as Elon Musk‘s SpaceX rake in more funding.
Read more CNBC tech news
The industry has also begun testing the public markets after a long hiatus in IPO deal activity, with space tech firm Voyager debuting in June.
Firefly makes rockets, space tugs and lunar landers, and is widely known for its satellite launching rockets known as Alpha.
The company has partnered with major defense players such as Lockheed Martin, L3Harris and NASA, and received a $50 million investment from defense contractor Northrop Grumman.
Firefly’s revenues jumped from $8.3 million a year ago to $55.9 million at the end of March, the company said. Its net loss grew to $60.1 million, from $52.8 million a year ago.