Sources: FTC has been investigating Broadcom for anticompetitive customer negotiation tactics for several months; source says probe doesn't include wireless arm
Context & Ripple Effects
The FTC's months-long probe of Broadcom's customer negotiation tactics, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, opened what became a multi-front antitrust campaign against the chipmaker. Within a year the agency was seeking evidence that Broadcom's conduct harmed rivals in WiFi and network switch chips, and Brussels opened its own formal investigation into suspected exclusivity practices.
The arc since: Broadcom agreed with the EU to refrain from exclusivity arrangements for set-top box and modem chips, then settled with the FTC in 2021 over alleged monopolization of the chip market for set-top boxes and broadband devices — the markets this initial probe was circling. The wireless arm's exclusion from the 2018 scope is the detail to watch: it kept Broadcom's smartphone chip business out of the enforcement perimeter.
First-order effects
- Broadcom's customers in set-top box and broadband device markets — the negotiation counterparties the probe centers on — gain implicit leverage, since the agency is examining how Broadcom structures its customer deals.
- The exclusion of Broadcom's wireless arm leaves its smartphone chip negotiations outside the probe's scope, insulating that business from the immediate scrutiny.
Second-order effects
- Regulators in Brussels followed the FTC's lead, opening a formal EU investigation into Broadcom's exclusivity practices and seeking an interim order to freeze the conduct before the case concluded.
- Rivals in the WiFi, network switch, and set-top box chip markets become the probe's evidentiary beneficiaries, as the FTC's broadened inquiry explicitly seeks evidence of harm to them.
Third-order effects
- The pattern — probe, broadening, settlement with conduct remedies rather than structural relief — became Broadcom's template for resolving antitrust exposure on two continents.
- The FTC's willingness to run this playbook against Broadcom resurfaced in 2026 with an investigation into whether Arm is illegally monopolizing parts of the semiconductor market, suggesting sustained agency attention to incumbent semiconductor licensing and sales practices.
The trend: Semiconductor incumbents face a repeatable antitrust sequence — negotiation-tactics probe, market-broadening, conduct-remedy settlement — as regulators target how dominant chip suppliers contract with customers.