Lina Khan

In 2025, Lina Khan’s coverage shifted from FTC chairmanship to the durability of her merger-skeptic agenda, from Microsoft scrutiny to Figma’s independent IPO.

Who they are

Lina Khan is the former FTC chair whose coverage centers on a more aggressive U.S. competition-policy approach to technology: merger oversight, platform power, consumer protection, noncompetes, and the market structure shaping AI. She is closely tied in these stories to the FTC’s scrutiny of Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and the broader Big Tech sector.

The recent arc

The recent coverage has moved into an after-tenure assessment. Khan’s FTC chair term ended in September 2024, but stories in 2025 continued to trace the agency’s agenda to her: Bloomberg reported that the FTC was proceeding with a Microsoft antitrust probe sources said she opened, while the Biden-era FTC junk-fee rule’s implementation showed parts of the consumer-protection program still reaching the market.

The most substantive new frame is whether blocking acquisitions creates room for independent challengers. In August 2025, Khan pointed to Figma’s IPO as evidence that startups can generate more value by growing independently rather than being acquired. That argument gained sharper stakes after the New York Times reported Meta’s FTC court win could enable Meta, Google and Microsoft to resume startup buying following a slowdown under Khan. Her February comments on DeepSeek likewise extended the competition case into AI, arguing that its advances exposed inadequate U.S. competition and the possibility that foreign startups could outpace Big Tech.

The tension

Coverage circles a direct conflict between Khan’s view that concentrated platforms and serial acquisitions can suppress future competitors, and the tech and venture constituencies that regard forceful merger enforcement as an impediment to growth and dealmaking. The public push by figures including Reid Hoffman for her ouster, the friction around Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, and the post-Khan debate over startup acquisitions all make that divide concrete; open-weight AI models and DeepSeek add a second question of whether competition policy can reduce dependence on closed-model and cloud gatekeepers.

Why it matters

If the independent-growth thesis holds, Khan’s tenure could remain a reference point for how regulators and founders evaluate acquisitions, IPOs and AI infrastructure even without her leading the FTC. But Meta’s legal victory and the new FTC leadership’s choices show that the practical reach of that agenda is unsettled: its legacy depends on whether enforcement survives courtroom tests and whether startups actually gain viable alternatives to acquisition by dominant platforms.

Related: FTC · Amazon · Meta · Big Tech · Biden · Biden names Lina Khan, an antitrust expert who wrote the “Amazon Antit