Wilson Sonsini | 2026 Antitrust Year in Preview

January 22, 2026

Last year was a landmark in the development of antitrust law. Enforcers, legislators, and private parties grappled with the fundamental shift represented by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, the resolution of important digital technology antitrust cases, and significant divergence in policy across a presidential administration transition. The changes will not stop in 2026. In this preview, we focus on several economic sectors that were most impacted by developments in antitrust law in 2025 to identify the trends that will drive governmental and private activity in antitrust in 2026.

AI. It is hard to overstate how much AI technologies have disrupted business in the past year and how rapidly firms have worked to invest in, develop, and deploy them. In the U.S., the Trump administration has identified AI as a strategic priority and has sought to establish a preemptive national policy through Executive Orders (EOs) and an AI Action Plan with the express goal of establishing American dominance in AI. The Trump administration’s policies promote elimination of barriers to development and deployment and would encourage open source and interoperable technologies.

Given these policies and the rate of change in AI sectors, enforcers have stated they will focus on potential lock-in or lock-out of important inputs and have remained wary that digital technology incumbents might leverage and extend their existing market positions. This year, we also expect enforcers to advance investigation and scrutiny of the minority investments, development partnerships, and reverse acquihires that have proliferated in AI sectors.

Importantly, the remedies opinion in the Google Search issued last year suggests that courts may be unwilling to intervene too heavily in rapidly changing markets. The court recognized the emergence of generative AI as a competitive threat to Google—even in the short time since the liability phase of the case—and relied on that development to reject the more aggressive remedies sought by the government. We therefore expect the agencies to seek, where possible, negotiated remedies that align with broader Trump administration policy priorities.

The Trump administration’s push for a national AI policy has also created direct conflict with some states, which have considered and passed numerous AI-related laws in recent years, including some meant to address perceived gaps in federal competition law and enforcement priorities. In December 2025, the Trump administration issued an EO directing federal authorities to seek to invalidate state laws deemed incompatible with the Trump administration’s national AI policies on constitutional and preemption grounds. Several states have publicly vowed to defend their legislation, setting the stage for a critical battle in the emerging trend of more vigorous and independent state antitrust enforcement.

AI is a major focus for European antitrust authorities as well. As in the U.S., enforcers have expressed interest in AI investments and reverse acquihires but have not yet initiated any investigations. In Europe, this is partly the result of jurisdictional limitations, and the European Commission (EC) has encouraged national authorities with broader reach to act. The EC and national authorities have, however, been active in investigating AI-related conduct: Italy’s enforcer and the EC have both opened investigations into Meta’s requirements around AI providers in WhatsApp, and the EC has opened an investigation into Google’s AI-related features and use of web and YouTube data to train AI models. EU authorities are also actively considering how the ex ante Digital Markets Act (DMA) may be applied to address AI infrastructure development, AI distribution, and access to data.

Although the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) was quick to initiate investigations into activity in AI industries, the UK government has set out a “pro-growth agenda” that we expect will lead the CMA to rely on enforcement from other jurisdictions absent UK-specific concerns.

For more detail, please see our 2026 AI Preview.

Big Tech. Decisions in the U.S. Department of Justice’s (DOJ’s) Google search and ad tech cases and the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) case challenging Meta’s Whatsapp and Instagram acquisitions dominated headlines in the U.S. in 2025. But the Trump administration also advanced litigation and investigations involving Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft that were initiated under President Biden. The government obtained mixed results in the liability phase of these cases, winning in the Google litigations but losing in Meta.

The Meta result is particularly significant. The court held that the government had failed to prove its alleged personal social networking market because of convergence between Meta (and Instagram) and players outside that market, namely TikTok and YouTube, that occurred during the pendency of the case. Judicial recognition of the dynamism of technology markets was also at work in the Google Search remedies phase, where the court relied on the emergence of generative AI as a potential threat during the litigation when rejecting the DOJ’s requested structural remedies and a ban on Google paying for placement and distribution. The factual records developed in these cases shed light on how rapidly entry, technological convergence, and changes in user preference can create credible competitive threats to even the most well-established digital technology incumbents.

Digital technology incumbents will nevertheless remain in the crosshairs of both state and federal enforcers going forward for both merger and conduct enforcement. Agency leaders under the Trump administration have diverged with their predecessors by signaling a friendlier view of acquisitions of early-stage companies in general, but they share Biden administration officials’ concern that digital technology incumbents are a particular threat to extend their positions into adjacent markets, including AI. In addition, federal antitrust agencies have taken up the Trump administration’s complaints concerning censorship by platform operators.

European and UK authorities carried on a steady stream of conduct enforcement against large digital technology firms in 2025. Traditional antitrust investigations have centered on allegations that platform operators unlawfully favored their own platform or adjacent services or disadvantaged those of rivals. Authorities have continued to designate firms and set requirements under ex ante regulatory regimes—the DMA in the EU and the Digital Market, Competition, and Consumers Act in the UK. In addition, the EU issued its first fines for breaching DMA obligations, fining Apple for violating anti-steering requirements and Meta for failing to give consumers an option that used less personal data. This year, we expect continued maturation of the ex ante regimes alongside continued aggressive enforcement with traditional tools.

For more detail, please see our 2026 Big Tech Preview.

Algorithmic Pricing. In 2025, businesses received some limited clarity as to judicial treatment of pricing algorithm cases as well as a window into how the Trump administration antitrust agencies will evaluate such algorithms. However, the year also saw new state-level restrictions and the beginnings of major conflict between state and federal authorities that may lead to a complex and uncertain compliance landscape.

District courts considering pricing algorithm claims have diverged on what legal test to apply and what bar plaintiffs must clear to properly allege an unlawful agreement to coordinate pricing decisions. In August 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit issued the first appellate opinion on the topic of algorithmic pricing and shed some (limited) light on the second issue. The court held insufficient allegations that defendants knowingly subscribed to the same pricing tool and that prices raised thereafter. The court left open, however, whether it would be necessary or sufficient to also allege that defendants agreed to take recommendations from the tool or that the tool used competitively sensitive data from the defendants to generate those recommendations. We expect courts to further resolve these questions as cases continue to advance in district courts this year.

In November 2025, the DOJ announced that it had reached a settlement (not joined by the state co-plaintiffs) in its case challenging RealPage’s rental rate recommendation tools. The settlement provides specific limits on when and how RealPage can collect and use historical confidential data from its customers, notably imposing stricter rules for runtime operation than for AI model training. The settlement is specific to the facts of the case, but it nevertheless provides a valuable view into how federal antitrust agencies will analyze algorithms that use pooled competitor data going forward.

The relative lack of success that plaintiffs have found in federal courts led both California and New York to amend their antitrust laws to address algorithmic pricing (though New York’s law is specific to the housing sector). However, these laws are imperiled by a Trump EO directing federal officials to challenge and seek to invalidate state AI laws found incompatible with the administration’s national AI policy. The state governments have vowed to defend their laws. These cases, if litigated, have the potential to impact the recent trend of more vigorous and independent state antitrust enforcement.

Algorithmic pricing investigations are less well developed in Europe and the UK. National authorities in Poland, Germany, and the Netherlands are reportedly investigating the use of algorithms to set or influence pricing. The German investigation is the most advanced: in June 2025, the German Federal Cartel Office sent formal charges to Amazon concerning its algorithmic tools used to dynamically set pricing caps and benchmark offers from third-party sellers. The UK CMA has expressed an interest in this area but has not yet announced any investigations.

For more detail, please see our 2026 Algorithmic Pricing Preview.

Life Sciences. Enforcers in the U.S., Europe, and the UK have made antitrust enforcement in life sciences and healthcare industries a priority for many years. The U.S. FTC challenged two life sciences mergers in 2025. In GTCR/Surmodics, the FTC lost its bid for a preliminary injunction after a court found that the FTC failed to show that a revised transaction, with a remedial divestiture executed by the parties, would likely substantially harm competition. The Trump administration agencies have expressed an openness to remedies in merger cases, a reversal from Biden-era policy, but in this case found the offered divestiture insufficient. The case further validates the strategy of litigating the fix in merger cases, and FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson has suggested it may lead to changes in how the FTC approaches and evaluates settlements.

But the FTC scored a win and successfully obtained a preliminary injunction against Edwards Lifescience’s acquisition of JenaValve—the only two to have reached clinical trials for a cardiac device to treat aortic regurgitation. The decision provides judicial validation for so-called “actual potential competition” merger cases, at least in markets with significant entry barriers.

The antitrust agencies have also continued to investigate prescription drug pricing practices and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), consistent with a broader Trump administration push to reduce medication prices. The FTC is finalizing a 6(b) study on PBMs initiated under the Biden administration and held a series of listening sessions on pharmaceutical industry issues jointly with the DOJ. The FTC is also continuing to litigate a case against a group of PBMs alleging that they created an anticompetitive system of rebates, reinforced by threats to exclude noncomplying manufacturers with exclusion from their formularies.

The EC and European national authorities have challenged a wide range of conduct concerning life sciences and healthcare industries. The EC has recently concluded investigations concerning cartel behavior and abusive conduct such as disparagement, abuse of regulatory practices, and excessive pricing. The EC is currently investigating Zoetis for a killer acquisition of a competing R&D project and carried out a dawn raid against Sanofi over allegations of anticompetitive disparagement. The French antitrust authority in November 2025 fined Doctolib for a range of abusive practices, including a finding that the company had acquired Mon Docteur for the purpose of eliminating a competitor. The case is reflective of efforts, discussed above in the context of AI, to make use of national authority call-in powers for below-threshold mergers. As in other sectors, the UK CMA is expected to take a more limited role in global transactions and matters that lack a specific impact on the UK.

For more detail, please see our 2026 Life Sciences and Healthcare Preview.

Labor. Extending antitrust enforcement in labor markets was a key priority of the Biden-era antitrust agencies. While the Trump administration agencies have expressed broad disagreement with the specific guidance and policy statements issued under President Biden, they have continued to investigate and enforce in labor markets. The DOJ obtained a guilty verdict—its first in a labor-related antitrust case—for a conspiracy among competitors to suppress wages for home health clinicians in Las Vegas. State and private plaintiffs have found success in the past year as well. The California attorney general reached a settlement involving a no-poach agreement, and private class actions involving no-poach claims by naval engineers and no-hire claims by Burger King employees were both permitted to proceed. We expect further criminal and civil challenges in the labor industry, from plaintiffs at all levels, this year.

In the last year of the Biden administration, the FTC promulgated a rule broadly banning non-compete agreements. The rule, and the exercise of authority under which it was issued, were subject to sharp criticism, and a challenge in the Northern District of Texas secured a nationwide injunction against the rule taking effect. The Biden-era FTC had appealed that ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, but in September 2025 the Trump administration FTC withdrew its appeal, effectively vacating the rule. The FTC announced a settlement with a pet cremation business that had implemented non-compete agreements the next day, emphasizing FTC Chair Ferguson’s preference for case-by-case enforcement.

Both the EC and the UK CMA issued their first fines for labor market investigations in 2025. The EC fined Delivery Hero and Glovo, finding that the former had leveraged its minority stake in the latter to facilitate agreements not to poach employees, to allocate territories, and to share competitively sensitive information. The CMA reached a settlement including fines with five companies that agreed to suppress wages for freelance workers involving in sports broadcast production. National authorities, including in France, Slovakia, Poland, Portugal, and Spain, continued to enforce and investigate in labor markets last year, with a particular focus on no-poach agreements.

We expect vigorous scrutiny of labor markets to continue. However, in the Tondela case, the Advocate General issued an opinion finding that a no-poach agreement would not be a “by object” infringement if justified by pandemic-related financial distress. This opinion, if adopted by the Court of Justice of the European Union, could temper enforcement in this area.

For more detail, please see our 2026 Labor Markets Preview..

Major court decisions and enforcement actions, as well as policy and legislative changes, significantly changed the antitrust landscape in 2025. We anticipate continued development in the coming year, particularly in the areas identified above, which we expect will remain subject to intense enforcement and political scrutiny against a backdrop of rapid and disruptive technological change.

Compliments of  Wilson Sonsini– a member of the EACCNY