DOJ, FTC, plan probes into Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI: Rpts.

The US Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission are looking to investigate Nvidia, OpenAI, and Microsoft. According to a report from The New York Times, the DOJ will investigate Nvidia (NVDA) to see if it has violated antitrust laws, while the FTC will probe Microsoft’s (MSFT) and OpenAI’s actions. It comes as The Wall Street Journal reports the FTC is probing whether Microsoft structured a deal with Inflection AI in a way to intentionally avoid regulator scrutiny.

A Microsoft spokesperson tells Yahoo Finance, “Our agreements with Inflection gave us the opportunity to recruit individuals at Inflection AI and build a team capable of accelerating Microsoft Copilot, while enabling Inflection to continue pursuing its independent business and ambition as an AI studio. We take our legal obligations to report transactions under the HSR Act seriously and are confident that we have complied with those obligations.”

Yahoo Finance legal reporter Alexis Keenan breaks down what the investigations could mean for the companies.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts.

This post was written by Stephanie Mikulich.

Video Transcript

All regulators are cracking down on Big Tech A I ventures.

The DOJ and FTC reportedly planning probes into NVIDIA.

Open A I and Microsoft.

We also got the Wall Street Journal saying that the FTC has issued Microsoft A subpoena for more information about those A I deals.

Yahoo Finance’s Alexis Keenan has the details on that.

Alexis.

Hi ladies, good morning.

So yeah, the reporting is that the agencies that regulate antitrust in the US that they found a way to divvy up the work.

So in this case, the Doj taking look at Nvidia’s antitrust uh potential violations.

Uh Nothing there yet.

This is just a probe and then the FTC taking on open A I and Microsoft and Microsoft has that $13 billion investment in Open A I.

So uh maybe A 24 there and it makes sense to split them up that way.

Now we knew back in January that the FTC had opened an investigation into Microsoft’s investment in Open A I as well as Google’s investment and relationship with anthropic uh arrival.

There also lie.

The FTC had opened an investigation into open A is conduct.

What is its conduct as far as being scrutinized by antitrust laws.

But what’s different here today is that the Wall Street Journal has a report saying that the FTC has officially uh taking a look, they’re opening a probe to look at Microsoft’s licensing deal with inflection A I.

So the company, what the concern is reportedly is that Microsoft is paying uh licensing fee to resell Inflections products.

Story continues

So $650 million there to do that.

But the concern reportedly is that they also hired the company’s staff, most of its staff, its co founder.

And the question there is whether that was a deal made to skirt anti trust rules which under heart Scott Redo require companies that are merging that are going to be acquired or acquire or just joint ventures.

That threshold there is a is 100 and $19.5 million.

So anything above that, that’s the point at which you have to tell the FTC and the DOJ what you are doing, what your intentions are.

And so the question is, is this masquerading this licensing deal as something else that should have been reported?

So some pressure there, uh so we’ll have to take a look at what transpires.

This is just a starting place.

But uh these are definitely probes that FTC chair, Lina Khan and Jonathan Cantor over at the Antitrust Division at the DOJ have said they want to get ahead of this space.

They don’t want A I to run amok and not be scrutinized in the way that prior tech eras have been.

Right.

I mean, that’s the kind of very friendly reporter way of saying the social media, the social media didn’t necessarily regulate it quickly enough.

And interesting to see whether or not they are going to be able to kind of change the timeline this time around Alexis.

Thank you so much for bringing us your great reporting there.

I really appreciate it so much.