Dana Mattioli

Stanley Woodward, a top Justice Department official, has told antitrust enforcers he prefers they stop taking cases to trial and settle them instead. Some lawyers at the department interpreted the comments from the department’s third-ranking official as a directive to resolve any litigation against companies and avoid future litigation. Woodward, who now directly oversees antitrust enforcement, has said internally that he favors avoiding drawn-out, manpower-intensive litigation. Woodward’s posture could weaken the department’s ability to challenge anticompetitive mergers and could put settl

President Donald Trump has gotten involved in regulatory decisions big and small that once were made by independent agencies, dramatically shifting the balance of power across Washington and reordering how influence campaigns are waged. Political appointees by nature tend to be closely aligned with the president’s worldview. But former agency officials across administrations say it is highly unusual for presidents to be so intimately involved in the details of regulatory reviews.

Amazon is in talks to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI, in what would be a giant bet on the hot artificial intelligence (AI) startup. The ChatGPT maker is seeking up to $100 billion in new capital from investors, a round that could value it at as much as $830 billion. Investing tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI could make Amazon the biggest contributor in the AI company’s ongoing fundraising round.

SpaceX has used its position as the world’s primary rocket launcher to push rival satellite operators to share wireless airwaves, showing how the company can flex its power in one area to benefit another part of its business.

Apparently, Elon Musk has plans to around $45 million a month to a new super political-action committee backing Donald Trump's presidential run. Other backers of the group, called America PAC, include Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, the Winklevoss twins, former U.S.

The Federal Trade Commission and 17 states sued Amazon, alleging the online retailer illegally wields monopoly power that keeps prices artificially high, locks sellers into its platform, and harms its rivals. The FTC and states alleged that Amazon violated antitrust laws by using anti-discounting measures that punished merchants for offering lower prices elsewhere.

House lawmakers proposed a raft of bipartisan legislation aimed at reining in the country’s biggest tech companies, including a bill that seeks to make Amazon and other large corporations effectively split in two or shed their private-label products.

The law firm Hagens Berman filed a lawsuit in a federal district court in New York alleges that a deal between Amazon and five major book publishers has led to higher e-book prices for all consumers, because it prevents rival retailers from selling any of these publishers’ e-books at a lower price than on Amazon.

Google has struck partnerships with some of the country’s largest hospital systems and most-renowned health-care providers, many of them vast in scope and few of their details previously reported. In just a few years, the company has achieved the ability to view or analyze tens of millions of patient health records in at least three-quarters of US states. In certain instances, the deals allow Google to access personally identifiable health information without the knowledge of patients or doctors.

The boards of Sprint and T-Mobile US struck a $26 billion merger that, if allowed by antitrust enforcers, would leave the US wireless market dominated by three national players. Under the terms of the deal, T-Mobile will exchange 9.75 Sprint shares for each T-Mobile share. T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom will own 42% of the combined company and Sprint parent SoftBank Group will own 27%. The remaining 31% will be held by the public. Deutsche Telekom would also control voting rights over 69% of the new company and appoint nine of its 14 directors.