EU Antitrust Chief Confronts Big Tech CEOs Over AI Market Power - Major Regulatory Showdown

The EU's top antitrust regulator has issued a stark warning to Big Tech's AI ambitions, signaling potential market corrections of up to 10% for companies found to be monopolizing artificial intelligence infrastructure. In a dramatic regulatory move, Teresa Ribera is confronting Alphabet's Sundar Pichai, Meta's Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI's Sam Altman in San Francisco this week, with Amazon's Andy Jassy next on her agenda. The European Commission's aggressive examination of the entire AI stack—from chatbots and training data to cloud infrastructure—comes amid multiple ongoing investigations into Google and Meta's business practices, creating immediate uncertainty for tech stocks and AI-focused digital assets.

Europe digs deeper into American chatbots, data, and cloud power

The European Commission is in charge of enforcing competition law for every part of the EU, and it believes that major risks are coming from Big Tech companies giving preference to their own AI products across the stack.

OpenAI, Nvidia, Meta, and Google have poured billions into AI infrastructure as demand keeps rising. That has turned computing capacity into a hard business weapon.

Ribera’s meetings in San Francisco are happening as Europe tries to decide whether this new wave of power is already becoming too concentrated.

At the same time, there is another fight going on between Brussels and Washington over the EU’s digital rules. Senior EU lawmakers said Tuesday that the United States should stop trying to change those laws.

German lawmaker Andreas Schwab told POLITICO, “There is a certain level of tiredness in Brussels when it comes to responding to these talking points from Washington.”

EU lawmakers push back as Washington attacks Europe’s digital rules and trade talks continue

Andreas was answering comments from Andrew Puzder, the U.S. ambassador to the EU, who called for fresh political talks on the EU’s digital rulebooks.

In an interview on Monday, Puzder said he hoped a vote this week on an EU-U.S. trade deal in the European Parliament would help open talks on easing digital rules.

But Italian socialist lawmaker Brando Benifei said, “I don’t see any political appetite in the European Parliament but not even in Council for scaling back our digital legislation dealing with malicious content, manipulation or unfair treatment of startups and consumers alike.”

The U.S. administration has repeatedly pushed against the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act, saying they unfairly target American companies. The EU has rejected that claim and said it will not back down.

Andreas said, “Whether it is Andrew Puzder today or others before him, the script remains the same: They characterize European law as an ‘attack’ while ignoring that these rules were debated democratically over several years and made for the benefit of consumers and companies, including American companies.”

He also said the Digital Markets Act is “not an opening bid in a trade negotiation; it is a settled legal reality.”

The European Parliament is due to vote on Thursday on whether to move forward the 2025 transatlantic trade deal agreed by the EU and the U.S. On Tuesday, Jamie Raskin, a top U.S. Democrat, told members of the Internal Market Committee that attacks on the EU’s digital rules are tied to a MAGA-aligned agenda.

Raskin said the Trump administration “works hard to promote the MAGA movement in Europe under the guise of defending free speech,” while cracking down on free speech at home.

In February, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Jim Jordan, called the DSA a “foreign censorship tool” and named nearly 30 EU officials involved in enforcing it.

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