Sen. Elizabeth Warren speaks, alongside Sen. Ron Wyden, to press in the Capitol, Feb. 3, 2025.
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Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Ron Wyden and Richard Blumenthal called on federal agencies to scrutinize AI deals from Nvidia, Meta and Google for potential antitrust violations, in a letter shared with CNBC.
The three Democrats addressed the letter on Wednesday to the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, urging the agencies to review recent deals in which tech companies have paid to pluck specific employees from startups without acquiring the companies entirely. The senators characterized the deals as “reverse acqui-hiring.”
These deals “function as de facto mergers, allowing the companies to consolidate talent, information, and resources, all while apparently attempting to bypass the scrutiny typically applied to mergers and acquisitions,” the letter reads.
The senators wrote that the FTC and DOJ should “carefully scrutinize these deals and block or reverse them should they violate antitrust law.” The pressure by the senators could make it more difficult for tech companies to continue pursuing these types of deals.
Venture capitalists and experts have previously told CNBC that these deals often leave some investors and employees in a state of limbo while founders and AI leaders get paid handsomely. The senators said these kinds of deals ultimately benefit big tech companies while impeding competition.
In the letter, the senators specifically mention Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI in June to bring in CEO Alexandr Wang to lead the social media company’s AI strategy. The letter also references Google’s $2.4 billion nonexclusive licensing agreement in July with Windsurf, which brought the search company key leaders from the AI coding startup. The most recent deal included in the letter was Nvidia’s $20 billion December deal to buy assets from AI chipmaker Groq and bring in senior leaders.
“These arrangements further consolidate the Big Tech industry, which in turn could cause higher prices and stifle innovation,” the senators wrote in the letter addressed to Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater and FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson. “The FTC and DOJ should not allow these companies to avoid the typical reviews that your agencies apply to acquisitions and mergers.”
The letter follows a statement from Ferguson in January in which he said the FTC would review these kinds of deals to learn whether tech companies are attempting to evade regulatory reviews.
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