Meta vs. the FTC: The blockbuster antitrust trial kicks off

Published

8 months ago

April 11, 2025

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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.

Zuckerberg has courted favor with the Trump administration as part of a broader policy change within Meta. The social media baron has reportedly met with the president at least three times since January, he attended Trump’s inauguration and he co-hosted a ball for the president in Washington.

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.

WATCH: Apple, Meta to face lighter fines under EU digital law.

Apple, Meta to face lighter fines under EU digital law: Report

Technology

Oracle says there have been ‘no delays’ in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Published

22 hours ago

December 12, 2025

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Oracle says there have been 'no delays' in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Oracle CEO Clay Magouyrk appears on a media tour of the Stargate AI data center in Abilene, Texas, on Sept. 23, 2025.

Kyle Grillot | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Oracle on Friday pushed back against a report that said the company will complete data centers for OpenAI, one of its major customers, in 2028, rather than 2027.

The delay is due to a shortage of labor and materials, according to the Friday report from Bloomberg, which cited unnamed people. Oracle shares fell to a session low of $185.98, down 6.5% from Thursday’s close.

“Site selection and delivery timelines were established in close coordination with OpenAI following execution of the agreement and were jointly agreed,” an Oracle spokesperson said in an email to CNBC. “There have been no delays to any sites required to meet our contractual commitments, and all milestones remain on track.”

The Oracle spokesperson did not specify a timeline for turning on cloud computing infrastructure for OpenAI. In September, OpenAI said it had a partnership with Oracle worth more than $300 billion over the next five years.

“We have a good relationship with OpenAI,” Clay Magouyrk, one of Oracle’s two newly appointed CEOs, said at an October analyst meeting.

Doing business with OpenAI is relatively new to 48-year-old Oracle. Historically, Oracle grew through sales of its database software and business applications. Its cloud infrastructure business now contributes over one-fourth of revenue, although Oracle remains a smaller hyperscaler than Amazon, Microsoft and Google.

OpenAI has also made commitments to other companies as it looks to meet expected capacity needs.

In September, Nvidia said it had signed a letter of intent with OpenAI to deploy at least 10 gigawatts of Nvidia equipment for the San Francisco artificial intelligence startup. The first phase of that project is expected in the second half of 2026.

Nvidia and OpenAI said in a September statement that they “look forward to finalizing the details of this new phase of strategic partnership in the coming weeks.”

But no announcement has come yet.

In a November filing, Nvidia said “there is no assurance that we will enter into definitive agreements with respect to the OpenAI opportunity.”

OpenAI has historically relied on Nvidia graphics processing units to operate ChatGPT and other products, and now it’s also looking at designing custom chips in a collaboration with Broadcom.

On Thursday, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan laid out a timeline for the OpenAI work, which was announced in October. Broadcom and OpenAI said they had signed a term sheet.

“It’s more like 2027, 2028, 2029, 10 gigawatts, that was the OpenAI discussion,” Tan said on Broadcom’s earnings call. “And that’s, I call it, an agreement, an alignment of where we’re headed with respect to a very respected and valued customer, OpenAI. But we do not expect much in 2026.”

OpenAI declined to comment.

WATCH: Oracle says there have been ‘no delays’ in OpenAI arrangement after stock slide

Technology

AI order from Trump might be ‘illegal,’ Democrats and consumer advocacy groups claim

Published

22 hours ago

December 12, 2025

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AI order from Trump might be ‘illegal,’ Democrats and consumer advocacy groups claim

“This is the wrong approach — and most likely illegal,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., said in a post on X Thursday.

“We need a strong federal safety standard, but we should not remove the few protections Americans currently have from the downsides of AI,” Klobuchar said.

Trump’s executive order directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to create a task force to challenge state laws regulating AI.

The Commerce Department was also directed to identify “onerous” state regulations aimed at AI.

The order is a win for tech companies such as OpenAI and Google and the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, which have all lobbied against state regulations they view as burdensome.

It follows a push by some Republicans in Congress to impose a moratorium on state AI laws. A recent plan to tack on that moratorium to the National Defense Authorization Act was scuttled.

Collin McCune, head of government affairs at Andreessen Horowitz, celebrated Trump’s order, calling it “an important first step” to boost American competition and innovation. But McCune urged Congress to codify a national AI framework.

“States have an important role in addressing harms and protecting people, but they can’t provide the long-term clarity or national direction that only Congress can deliver,” McCune said in a statement.

Sriram Krishnan, a White House AI advisor and former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, during an interview Friday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” said that Trump is was looking to partner with Congress to pass such legislation.

“The White House is now taking a firm stance where we want to push back on ‘doomer’ laws that exist in a bunch of states around the country,” Krishnan said.

He also said that the goal of the executive order is to give the White House tools to go after state laws that it believes make America less competitive, such as recently passed legislation in Democratic-led states like California and Colorado.

The White House will not use the executive order to target state laws that protect the safety of children, Krishnan said.

Robert Weissman, co-president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, called Trump’s order “mostly bluster” and said the president “cannot unilaterally preempt state law.”

“We expect the EO to be challenged in court and defeated,” Weissman said in a statement. “In the meantime, states should continue their efforts to protect their residents from the mounting dangers of unregulated AI.”

Weissman said about the order, “This reward to Big Tech is a disgraceful invitation to reckless behavior
by the world’s largest corporations and a complete override of the federalist principles that Trump and MAGA claim to venerate.”

In the short term, the order could affect a handful of states that have already passed legislation targeting AI. The order says that states whose laws are considered onerous could lose federal funding.

One Colorado law, set to take effect in June, will require AI developers to protect consumers from reasonably foreseeable risks of algorithmic discrimination.

Some say Trump’s order will have no real impact on that law or other state regulations.

“I’m pretty much ignoring it, because an executive order cannot tell a state what to do,” said Colorado state Rep. Brianna Titone, a Democrat who co-sponsored the anti-discrimination law.

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed a law that, starting in January, will require major AI companies to publicly disclose their safety protocols.

That law’s author, state Sen. Scott Wiener, said that Trump’s stated goal of having the United States dominate the AI sector is undercut by his recent moves.

“Of course, he just authorized chip sales to China & Saudi Arabia: the exact opposite of ensuring U.S. dominance,” Wiener wrote in an X post on Thursday night. The Bay Area Democrat is seeking to succeed Speaker-emerita Nancy Pelosi in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Trump on Monday said he will Nvidia to sell its advanced H200 chips to “approved customers” in China, provided that U.S. gets a 25% cut of revenues.

Technology

Coinbase to soon unveil prediction markets powered by Kalshi, source says

Published

23 hours ago

December 12, 2025

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Coinbase to soon unveil prediction markets powered by Kalshi, source says

Feature China | Future Publishing | Getty Images

Coinbase is gearing up to launch an in-house prediction market, powered by Kalshi, a source close to the matter told CNBC — a strategic play to expand the number of asset classes available on the cryptocurrency exchange at a time some investors are shying away from digital assets.

The source said Coinbase and Kalshi will “soon” formally announce the prediction market, with news on the matter potentially coming as early as next week.

Rumblings of the prediction market launch have swirled for nearly a month. An alleged screenshot of Coinbase’s prediction markets dashboard shared by Silicon Valley researcher Jane Manchun Wong in an X post dated Nov. 18 offered some clues about the new product.

The Information first reported on Nov. 19 that Coinbase planned to launch prediction markets powered by Kalshi, adding that the exchange would unveil the new product at its “Coinbase System Update” event on Dec. 17. Bloomberg published a similar report on Thursday, citing a source familiar with the matter, adding that Coinbase would also announce a tokenized stock offering at the showcase.

Coinbase declined to confirm the reports to CNBC, but said to tune into its event next week. The firm did not comment on a timeline for when its prediction markets would go live for its users.

Coinbase’s upcoming product launches underscore its push to refashion itself into an “everything exchange,” or a one-stop shop for trading all kinds of assets, including crypto tokens, tokenized stocks and event contracts. In May, CEO Brian Armstrong articulated that “everything exchange” vision to investors, saying Coinbase would aim to become a top financial services app within the next decade.

The trading platform is setting its sights on that goal as it faces intensifying competition from rivals such as Robinhood, Gemini and Kraken. All three have launched tokenized equity offerings to users outside of the U.S. within the past year, in addition to exploring prediction markets to varying extents.

Coinbase’s moves to expand the financial instruments available to its users also come as investor sentiment on digital assets cools. A series of liquidations of highly leveraged digital asset positions in mid-October triggered several pullbacks in the crypto market, prompting investors to rotate out of tokens and into gold and other safe-have assets.

Bitcoin fell as low as around $85,000 in early December, hitting its lowest level since last March. The token was last trading at $89,951, down 23% in the past three months. Coinbase has also fallen more than 16% over the past three months.

The deal also underscores U.S.-based prediction markets operator Kalshi’s push to embed its event contracts into various brokerages, widening its reach as the prediction markets space becomes increasingly competitive.

This year, Kalshi embedded several of its prediction markets into trading platform Robinhood, as part of a non-exclusive partnership between the companies. Kalshi has also engaged in talks with several other major brokerages, including those in the crypto industry, with the aim of closing more deals like the ones it has struck with Robinhood and now Coinbase, a source familiar with the matter told CNBC.