AI has helped elevate a new set of players to Washington’s attention, including Nvidia, the maker of specialized AI microchips whose value briefly passed $3 trillion this week, and is now the world’s third-most valuable company behind Microsoft and Apple.
By November, any investigation would still be in the early stages. And a change in administration would almost certainly lead to the departure of DOJ antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter and FTC Chair Lina Khan, two of the most aggressive competition enforcers to lead either agency in at least a generation.
An FTC spokesperson declined to comment on the impact of the clearance process, saying that the only “disadvantage enforcers have is the historic underfunding by Congress of the agency budgets” as they tackle the world’s richest companies. A DOJ spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. “Here this is not happening decades after, but it’s happening — not quite in real time, but certainly with a not as big of a delay as the decade delay we had with previous tech investigations,” Ederer said.