June 18, 2026, 21:45 GMT | Insight
The
US Federal Trade Commission has become more effective at identifying acqui-hires before they close and it is studying whether existing antitrust tools are sufficient to address the increasingly prominent transactions, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson told MLex.
The US Federal Trade Commission has become more effective at identifying acqui-hires before they close and it is studying whether existing antitrust tools are sufficient to address the increasingly prominent transactions, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson told MLex.
The agency has stepped up scrutiny of acqui-hires because parties often view them as falling outside Hart-Scott-Rodino merger notification requirements, meaning regulators may not learn about the deals until after they have been completed.
"We've gotten better about finding out about them early and trying to get info on them early," Ferguson said in an exclusive interview with MLex. "[The parties'] view is they don't have to file with us at all."
That poses a challenge for the agency because unwinding completed transactions can be difficult, Ferguson said. When the FTC identifies a potentially problematic deal before closing, staff can seek information and determine whether the arrangement resembles a merger.
The FTC chairman suggested companies need not resort to novel transaction structures to avoid regulatory review under the Trump administration.
"You don't need to do this anymore. You get a fair shake at the commission," he said. "I might block your deal if it's illegal, but I'm not going to hold you up if it's not illegal. Stop trying to come up with clever ways to get around the antitrust laws," Ferguson said.
He said the FTC is currently examining whether existing enforcement tools are adequate to address the transactions, particularly as acqui-hires in the artificial intelligence sector have grown substantially in size and value.
"We are actively studying whether the tools we have are sufficient right now," Ferguson said. "We're looking at acqui-hires much more closely."
While acqui-hires have long existed in Silicon Valley, Ferguson said they historically involved relatively small purchases of startup teams, often involving only a handful of engineers.
"The acqui-hires have been going on in Silicon Valley since at least the 2000s, but they were always very small," he said.
More recently, however, companies have entered into transactions valued in the hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars, prompting concern within the agency.
The FTC is seeking outside input on whether current reporting requirements adequately capture acqui-hires. Ferguson said the agency included a series of questions on acqui-hires in its recent request for information on the HSR notification process aimed at gathering public views on them and their competitive implications.
"We put out a bunch of questions in the RFI on [the] HSR [form] to try to get more information on acqui-hires and how other people see them," Ferguson said.
The effort is part of a broader review of whether existing antitrust tools are sufficient to address transactions that may resemble mergers but are structured as talent acquisitions.
But he still thinks it is a problem. "Every time I see one of these ... billion-dollar acqui-hire [deals] I get a little nervous," Ferguson said, adding that there's no need to game the system in the Trump administration and that he won't make the process a punishment.
"The fact that these things continue to develop, it fills me with some alarm," Ferguson said.
Asked about "killer acquisitions" — when a dominant firm acquires a smaller firm primarily to shut down and eliminate competition from the target — in AI markets, Ferguson said such transactions are difficult to identify in any industry and especially challenging in AI, where competition among model developers is evolving rapidly.
"The LLM market is so competitive right now," he said. Companies are more likely to acquire technology in order to improve their own products than to eliminate an emerging rival, he added.
As a result, Ferguson indicated the FTC is unlikely to identify killer acquisitions simply by scanning the market for suspicious transactions.
"If we ever saw documents" showing that a deal was intended to eliminate a competitive threat, "I'm ready to enforce," he said. But in a market where firms are constantly racing to gain technological advantages, distinguishing between integration and suppression is exceptionally difficult.
Please email editors@mlex.com to contact the editorial staff regarding this story, or to submit the names of lawyers and advisers.
Tags
Sections:
Mergers & Acquisitions, DealRisk®
Industries:
Computing & Information Technology
Geographies:
North America, United States