As Microsoft faces intensifying federal scrutiny, one of the company’s billionaire Democratic donors is now pressuring the party’s presumptive presidential nominee Kamala Harris to fire the government’s top antitrust regulator. The consumer watchdog has been actively scrutinizing Big Tech and fighting mergers — including one between Microsoft and an AI giant the donor cofounded.
If Harris follows through with the request as president and fires Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan, the move would run counter to polling from 2022 that highlights 44 percent of Americans want more regulations for Big Tech companies and other monopolies.
Harris has not yet detailed her plans for antitrust enforcement or consumer protection, and her record as California attorney general is mixed on reining in anticompetitive business practices.
On Wednesday, the New York Times reported that while Harris “remains a bit of an enigma in the business world,” one of her donors said she had privately “expressed skepticism of Ms Khan’s expansive view of antitrust powers.”
The same day, Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn founder and powerful venture capitalist, appeared on CNN to praise Harris’s record on business and told the network that Khan should be fired. Harris is reportedly planning a Silicon Valley fundraising drive alongside Hoffman in coming months.
Hoffman sits on the board of Microsoft after selling LinkedIn to the company in 2016 for more than $26 billion, then the largest acquisition in company history. Microsoft is currently facing scrutiny from Khan’s FTC for acquiring Inflection AI, a company that Hoffman cofounded in 2022 while sitting on Microsoft’s board. Hoffman’s venture capital firm…
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Auteur: Jean Yi
