Beatrice Nolan
Tue, April 15, 2025
FORTUNE
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand on Monday amid a landmark antitrust trial against the company.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once floated the idea of wiping users’ Facebook friends to boost the platform's relevance. The email was revealed as part of the FTC's landmark antitrust case against Meta. The FTC is seeking to unwind Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp, but the company maintains it does not hold a monopoly power in a highly competitive and rapidly evolving digital marketplace.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand on Monday amid a landmark antitrust trial against the company.
Various emails from Zuckerberg's past communication were introduced as evidence, including one from 2022, when the Meta boss proposed a “crazy” strategy to boost Facebook's waning cultural relevance: deleting all users' friend networks.
"Option 1. Double down on Friending," Zuckerberg wrote in a 2022 message to senior Meta executives. "One potentially crazy idea is to consider wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again."
The message, suggested in response to growing concerns about Facebook’s weakening relevance, suggested that the company could revitalize user engagement by eliminating existing friend connections and encouraging users to rebuild their networks from scratch.
The proposal was met with skepticism from some within the company. Tom Alison, the head of Facebook at the time, cautioned that such a move could undermine critical platform functionality, particularly on Instagram.
He responded to the Meta boss, writing, "I'm not sure Option #1 in your proposal (Double-down on Friending) would be viable given my understanding of how vital the friend use case is to IG."
Zuckerberg pressed the idea further, however, questioning whether a shift from a friend-based model to a follower-based model might be feasible.
Though the proposal was never actually implemented, as Zuckerberg noted in court on Monday, the email reveals how concerned Meta was with remaining competitive in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.
Meta's antitrust trial
A separate internal email, written by the Meta CEO in 2008, is at the heart of the FTC’s ongoing antitrust case against the platform. In it, he wrote, “It is better to buy than compete.”
The trial, which began Monday, is the result of a years-in-the-making case over Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. The FTC's case alleges the company bought the rival platforms to squash competition and establish an illegal monopoly in the social media market. If Meta loses the case it could be forced to break off Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta insists that the competitive landscape has shifted dramatically and that it now contends with a host of formidable rivals including TikTok, YouTube, iMessage, and more.
What Meta stands to lose if the FTC wins
Quartz
“The evidence at trial will show what every 17-year-old in the world knows: Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp compete with Chinese-owned TikTok, YouTube, X, iMessage and many others. More than 10 years after the FTC reviewed and cleared our acquisitions, the Commission’s action in this case sends the message that no deal is ever truly final. Regulators should be supporting American innovation, rather than seeking to break up a great American company and further advantaging China on critical issues like AI,” the company said in a statement.
Experts say the FTC will face an uphill battle in proving its case, pointing to a recent court filing in which Meta emphasized that the FTC must demonstrate the company holds monopoly power in the current market—not based on conditions from years past. This requirement may be a hurdle for regulators, as the competitive landscape has evolved significantly since Meta acquired WhatsApp and Instagram with new powerful rivals like TikTok gaining ground.
The risks for Meta are still significant, as a forced divestiture of Instagram could slash its advertising revenues by as much as 50%.
Representatives for Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fortune, made outside normal working hours.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Brent D. Griffiths,
Natalie Musumeci
Tue, April 15, 2025
BUSINESS INSIDER
Mark Zuckerberg returned Tuesday for a second day of testimony in Meta's antitrust trial.
The Meta boss was grilled by the FTC about his company's 2012 purchase of Instagram.
The FTC claims Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp violated competition laws.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was back in the hot seat on Tuesday in the social media empire's landmark antitrust trial.
While on the witness stand for a second day of testimony, the tech mogul faced intense grilling by a Federal Trade Commission lawyer over his company's 2012 purchase of Instagram for $1 billion.
The FTC argues in its case against Meta that the company "helped cement" an illegal monopoly in the social media market with its acquisitions of Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp two years later.
Zuckerberg talked about the purchase of Instagram in a November 2012 message to Sheryl Sandberg, then the chief operating officer of Meta, which was then called Facebook.
In the same note, he offered to teach Sandberg how to play the board game Settlers of Catan, according to partially redacted messages revealed by the US government during Zuckerberg's testimony.
"We would love it. I want to learn Settlers of Catan too so we can play," Sandberg told Zuckerberg in the message.
He responded: "I can definitely teach you Settlers of Catan. It's very easy to learn."
A recently released memoir by the former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams says company employees let Zuckerberg win the popular board game in which players compete to build settlements and cities. An ex-employee has denied the account, saying Zuckerberg won by persuading the other players to gang up on him.
Tue, April 15, 2025
BUSINESS INSIDER
Mark Zuckerberg returned Tuesday for a second day of testimony in Meta's antitrust trial.
The Meta boss was grilled by the FTC about his company's 2012 purchase of Instagram.
The FTC claims Meta's acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp violated competition laws.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg was back in the hot seat on Tuesday in the social media empire's landmark antitrust trial.
While on the witness stand for a second day of testimony, the tech mogul faced intense grilling by a Federal Trade Commission lawyer over his company's 2012 purchase of Instagram for $1 billion.
The FTC argues in its case against Meta that the company "helped cement" an illegal monopoly in the social media market with its acquisitions of Instagram and the messaging app WhatsApp two years later.
Zuckerberg talked about the purchase of Instagram in a November 2012 message to Sheryl Sandberg, then the chief operating officer of Meta, which was then called Facebook.
In the same note, he offered to teach Sandberg how to play the board game Settlers of Catan, according to partially redacted messages revealed by the US government during Zuckerberg's testimony.
"We would love it. I want to learn Settlers of Catan too so we can play," Sandberg told Zuckerberg in the message.
He responded: "I can definitely teach you Settlers of Catan. It's very easy to learn."
A recently released memoir by the former Facebook executive Sarah Wynn-Williams says company employees let Zuckerberg win the popular board game in which players compete to build settlements and cities. An ex-employee has denied the account, saying Zuckerberg won by persuading the other players to gang up on him.
Zuckerberg once offered to teach Sheryl Sandberg how to play Settlers of Catan.Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Buying competitors
In his 2012 messages to Sandberg, Zuckerberg wrote that Facebook Messenger wasn't "beating" WhatsApp, adding, "Instagram was growing so much faster than us that we had to buy them for $1 billion."
Zuckerberg wrote: "That's not exactly killing it."
While under questioning on Tuesday in a Washington, DC, federal courtroom, the FTC's lead litigator, Daniel Matheson, posited to Zuckerberg that the "genuine reason" he bought Instagram was to be "disruptive."
"If you choose to buy something, you are inherently taking someone who would be a competitor off the market," Zuckerberg said. "It ended up being very valuable to bring them in."
Matheson then raised the idea that Zuckerberg could have developed his own alternative to Instagram to compete.
"We could have built our own app, but whether it would have succeeded or not would be speculation," Zuckerberg said. "We have probably tried building dozens of apps over the history of the company, and a majority of them don't go anywhere."
The US government called Zuckerberg as its first witness after the blockbuster trial opened Monday. It's expected to last up to eight weeks.
The FTC alleges that Meta's $1 billion acquisition of Instagram and its $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp were intended to box out competition and dominate the social media sphere.
The government says these acquisitions were part of Meta's "buy or bury" strategy to maintain market dominance and stamp out competitive threats.
The FTC said in court papers that Meta had maintained its monopoly position "in significant part" by pursuing Zuckerberg's strategy outlined in an internal 2008 email in which the CEO wrote, "It is better to buy than compete."
Meta argues there's no monopoly and says the company faces massive competition from apps such as TikTok and YouTube — and is no longer just for social networking but part of a greater entertainment landscape with plenty of rivals.
The case, set to be decided by Judge James Boasberg, could be one of the most consequential antitrust trials in years. If FTC regulators have their way, Meta could be forced to sell off WhatsApp and Instagram.
Mark Zuckerberg once considered deleting all your Facebook friends
Sarah Perez
Tue, April 15, 2025
TECH CRUNCH
Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive officer of Meta Platforms Inc., during the Meta Connect event in Menlo Park, California, US, on Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2024. Meta Platforms Inc. debuted its first pair of augmented reality glasses, devices that show a combined view of the digital and physical worlds, a key step in Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg's goal of one day offering a hands-free alternative to the smartphone. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty ImagesMore
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg once considered deleting everyone's Facebook friends in an effort to boost the social network's cultural relevance. This "potentially crazy idea," as the exec called it at the time, was revealed on Monday as a part of the evidence introduced during the first day of the U.S. government's antitrust trial against Meta.
In one message to Meta employees in 2022, Zuckerberg proposed the strategy of "wiping everyone's graphs and having them start again" as a possible solution to Facebook's declining significance in the social networking space. The idea was that forcing everyone to re-create their friend graphs could encourage users to reconnect with the social network as they rebuild their social connections.
Others at Meta, including the head of Facebook, Tom Alison, pushed back on the plan, and ultimately, the strategy was never implemented.
However, the evidence presented in the trial revealed that Zuckerberg had considered other strategies to maintain his company's relevance, including shifting Facebook from a friends-based model to a follower-based model. That also never came to be.
In recent weeks, Facebook has focused again on connecting friends, having revamped its Friends tab in an effort to return to an "OG Facebook." The new tab centralizes friend requests and only friends' content, including their posts, reels, stories, and birthdays.
“I think there are a lot of opportunities to make [Facebook] way more culturally influential than it is today,” Zuckerberg told investors during Meta's Q4 2024 earnings call about his key goals for the year ahead. “I think some of this will kind of get back to how Facebook was originally used back in the day.”
Auzinea Bacon and Clare Duffy,
CNN
Mon, April 14, 2025
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends Donald Trump's presidential inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. - Kenny Holston/Pool/Reuters
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand Monday to defend his company against accusations by the Federal Trade Commission that it bought competing social media companies to dominate the market with a monopoly.
It was the first of what is expected to be two days of testimony for Zuckerberg, who will seek to explain two of his company’s most important acquisitions, Instagram and WhatsApp.
And although Zuckerberg is no stranger to defending his company, the stakes in this case may be higher than ever before. If the FTC wins, Meta could be forced to break itself apart and spin off WhatsApp and Instagram, which would upend the company’s core digital advertising business and reshape the broader social media ecosystem.
Meta relies on the 3.3 billion daily users it claims across its platforms as one of the core selling points of its ad business, which last year alone raked in more than $160 billion in revenue.
But the government argued repeatedly in opening statements that Meta’s large user base reflected not simple success, but a lack of choice, saying that “consumers do not have reasonable alternatives” to Meta’s platforms. Lawyers for Meta argued that its platforms have plenty of competition in the social media space and that regulators approved the purchases years ago when they were made.
The FTC, however, argued that the acquisitions were intended to prevent Meta from having to compete with nascent, would-be challengers by buying them instead. One email dating to 2011 from Zuckerberg to Facebook executives detailed the company’s reasoning for buying Instagram, relating to the company’s stalled efforts to develop an app called Facebook Camera.
“in the time it has taken us to get our act together on this, Instagram has become a large and viable competitor to us on mobile photos, which will increasingly be the future of photos,” Zuckerberg wrote at the time. The company ended up acquiring Instagram in April 2012.
The FTC questioned Zuckerberg about the transformation of Facebook from a platform designed to facilitate connections between friends and family to one focused more on showing users interesting third-party content, including the launch of features like the news feed and groups.
“It’s the case that over time, the ‘interest’ part of that has gotten built out more than the ‘friend’ part,” Zuckerberg said. “(Users are) connected to a lot more groups and other kinds of things. The ‘friend’ part has gone down quite a bit, but it’s still something we care about.”
A large portion of Zuckerberg’s testimony, however, focused on the messaging features built into many of Meta’s platforms, from Facebook to Instagram to WhatsApp, which could be key to how the FTC defines the “market” Meta dominates with its platforms.
Zuckerberg said that messaging is “symbiotic” to Facebook’s larger offerings, as it allows users to share content they find with friends, after the FTC attorney asked if Zuckerberg considered messaging to be a “complement” to the platform’s core services.
Separately, Zuckerberg conceded that in one 2022 email exchange with Chief Product Officer Chris Cox and Facebook President Tom Alison, he was, as FTC attorney Daniel Matheson put it, “discussing strategies that Meta might employ to ensure there’s a vision for Facebook in light of concern for cultural relevance,” — a reference to Facebook’s declining popularity compared to Instagram and third-party platforms like TikTok.
“That’s generally a good summary,” Zuckerberg said.
–This story has been updated with additional details and context.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
Meta Antitrust Trial Begins That Could Force Instagram Sale
Mon, April 14, 2025
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg attends Donald Trump's presidential inauguration ceremony in Washington, DC, on January 20, 2025. - Kenny Holston/Pool/Reuters
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the witness stand Monday to defend his company against accusations by the Federal Trade Commission that it bought competing social media companies to dominate the market with a monopoly.
It was the first of what is expected to be two days of testimony for Zuckerberg, who will seek to explain two of his company’s most important acquisitions, Instagram and WhatsApp.
And although Zuckerberg is no stranger to defending his company, the stakes in this case may be higher than ever before. If the FTC wins, Meta could be forced to break itself apart and spin off WhatsApp and Instagram, which would upend the company’s core digital advertising business and reshape the broader social media ecosystem.
Meta relies on the 3.3 billion daily users it claims across its platforms as one of the core selling points of its ad business, which last year alone raked in more than $160 billion in revenue.
But the government argued repeatedly in opening statements that Meta’s large user base reflected not simple success, but a lack of choice, saying that “consumers do not have reasonable alternatives” to Meta’s platforms. Lawyers for Meta argued that its platforms have plenty of competition in the social media space and that regulators approved the purchases years ago when they were made.
The FTC, however, argued that the acquisitions were intended to prevent Meta from having to compete with nascent, would-be challengers by buying them instead. One email dating to 2011 from Zuckerberg to Facebook executives detailed the company’s reasoning for buying Instagram, relating to the company’s stalled efforts to develop an app called Facebook Camera.
“in the time it has taken us to get our act together on this, Instagram has become a large and viable competitor to us on mobile photos, which will increasingly be the future of photos,” Zuckerberg wrote at the time. The company ended up acquiring Instagram in April 2012.
The FTC questioned Zuckerberg about the transformation of Facebook from a platform designed to facilitate connections between friends and family to one focused more on showing users interesting third-party content, including the launch of features like the news feed and groups.
“It’s the case that over time, the ‘interest’ part of that has gotten built out more than the ‘friend’ part,” Zuckerberg said. “(Users are) connected to a lot more groups and other kinds of things. The ‘friend’ part has gone down quite a bit, but it’s still something we care about.”
A large portion of Zuckerberg’s testimony, however, focused on the messaging features built into many of Meta’s platforms, from Facebook to Instagram to WhatsApp, which could be key to how the FTC defines the “market” Meta dominates with its platforms.
Zuckerberg said that messaging is “symbiotic” to Facebook’s larger offerings, as it allows users to share content they find with friends, after the FTC attorney asked if Zuckerberg considered messaging to be a “complement” to the platform’s core services.
Separately, Zuckerberg conceded that in one 2022 email exchange with Chief Product Officer Chris Cox and Facebook President Tom Alison, he was, as FTC attorney Daniel Matheson put it, “discussing strategies that Meta might employ to ensure there’s a vision for Facebook in light of concern for cultural relevance,” — a reference to Facebook’s declining popularity compared to Instagram and third-party platforms like TikTok.
“That’s generally a good summary,” Zuckerberg said.
–This story has been updated with additional details and context.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
Meta Antitrust Trial Begins That Could Force Instagram Sale
Andrew Kessel
Mon, April 14, 2025
INVESTOPEDIA
picture alliance / Contributor / Getty Images
Key Takeaways
Meta went to court Monday against the Federal Trade Commission in a landmark antitrust case.
If the trial ends in the FTC’s favor, Meta could be forced to sells apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly sought help from the Trump administration in resolving the case.
Meta (META) went to court Monday against the Federal Trade Commission in a landmark antitrust case that could force the social media titan to sell off Instagram or WhatsApp.
The FTC’s complaint, originally filed in 2021, alleges Meta engaged in an “illegal buy-or-bury scheme to maintain its dominance” and “acquired innovative competitors with popular mobile features that succeeded where Facebook’s own offerings fell flat or fell apart.”
If the trial ends in the FTC’s favor, Meta could be forced to break up its social media holdings by selling off apps such as Instagram or the social messaging platform WhatsApp.
picture alliance / Contributor / Getty Images
Key Takeaways
Meta went to court Monday against the Federal Trade Commission in a landmark antitrust case.
If the trial ends in the FTC’s favor, Meta could be forced to sells apps such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly sought help from the Trump administration in resolving the case.
Meta (META) went to court Monday against the Federal Trade Commission in a landmark antitrust case that could force the social media titan to sell off Instagram or WhatsApp.
The FTC’s complaint, originally filed in 2021, alleges Meta engaged in an “illegal buy-or-bury scheme to maintain its dominance” and “acquired innovative competitors with popular mobile features that succeeded where Facebook’s own offerings fell flat or fell apart.”
If the trial ends in the FTC’s favor, Meta could be forced to break up its social media holdings by selling off apps such as Instagram or the social messaging platform WhatsApp.
Meta CEO Zuckerberg Seeks Trump Administration's Help To Resolve Case
The trial comes a couple weeks after Zuckerberg reportedly visited the White House to seek President Donald Trump's help to resolve the FTC case, according to reporting from the New York Times.
The Meta CEO has also looked to the administration for help in fighting against looming fines from the European Commission, according to reports.
In a statement over the weekend, Meta Chief Legal Officer Jennifer Newstead said, "it’s absurd that the FTC is trying to break up a great American company at the same time the Administration is trying to save Chinese-owned TikTok."
Shares of Meta slid about 2% in recent trading Monday. The stock is down 9% so far in 2025.
Mark Zuckerberg’s showdown with the FTC is massive for Meta—and even bigger for tech overall
Allie Garfinkle
Tue, April 15, 2025
FORTUNE
Suited in variations of blue, Mark Zuckerberg took the stand Monday to defend his company’s past—and fight for its future.
The CEO of Meta, Zuckerberg has helmed the company that began as Facebook for more than 20 years. Over the last decade, he’s had to defend his business in Washington, D.C. plenty of times before, from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica hearings to the 2021 Congressional hearings focused on disinformation.
But arguably, these are the highest stakes Zuckerberg has faced so far, because what’s on trial is fundamental: The composition of his sprawling, $1.35 trillion market cap business.
The FTC has sued Meta, arguing that the social media giant’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp more than a decade ago were anti-competitive tactics to eliminate rivals. If Meta loses the case, it could be forced to divest the two apps. The case, which has its roots in the first Trump administration and was carried on by Biden FTC Chair Lina Khan, has travelled a long and winding docket (it was initially dismissed and then refiled) to finally make it to trial—with Zuckerberg as the first witness.
While FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson argued that “consumers do not have reasonable alternatives” to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Zuckerberg made the case that Meta’s market is far bigger (and more competitive) than the government suggests. On the stand, Zuckerberg dismissed the idea that Facebook was centered on friends, and said that the company had become “more of a broad discovery and entertainment space.”
This case, of course, is far bigger than Meta. On some level, it’s existential for the tech landscape as a whole—at least, when it comes to how the industry currently operates. Whether or not the FTC’s claims about Meta’s anticompetitive motives are correct, the underlying business practice—a tech giant swallowing up an innovative startup—is the way the tech ecosystem has been structured to function, and to reward its various participants, over the past several decades.
For startups, especially those with limited IPO prospects, dreams of a Big Tech exit have been dim for the last several years—and under the Trump administration, investors and entrepreneurs have been eagerly waiting for M&A to roar back to life.
There is some evidence that has been happening—take, for example, Google’s blowout acquisition of Wiz for $32 billion, announced in March and the largest deal in the search giant’s history. And some in Meta’s camp are no doubt holding out hope that Trump will step in and pressure the FTC to settle the case with Zuckerberg (Meta has certainly been lobbying the President).
But the reality is this: If Meta loses this trial, the Big Tech dealmaking that was beginning to thaw is very likely to freeze back over, affecting the whole ecosystem. For startups, the hopes of exiting to a tech giant will appear grimmer, and liquidity-starved VCs will continue to see exits stall while LPs grow increasingly impatient for returns.
Again, none of this is to excuse or condone the monopolistic market concentration that may have been created over time. But given the incentives that are currently built into tech, it does remain natural for giants to look for innovation by acquiring startups.
Zuckerberg is expected to take the stand again on Tuesday, and when he does, he won’t just be making the case for his company. He’ll be making the case for Big Tech M&A being allowed to return to its longstanding modus operandi—for better, or for worse.
Freeze...The Trump administration said yesterday that it's frozen about $2.2 billion in federal funds for Harvard, amid a standoff over demands sent by the government last week. Harvard is the latest prestigious university caught in a crossfire with the Trump administration. These showdowns could create pressure on endowments, traditional limited partners of VC firms.
ICYMI...I recently profiled Conviction founder Sarah Guo. We talked about what it was like to grow up in a startup office, and why prior assumptions don't hold in the age of AI. Read the story here.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
Suited in variations of blue, Mark Zuckerberg took the stand Monday to defend his company’s past—and fight for its future.
The CEO of Meta, Zuckerberg has helmed the company that began as Facebook for more than 20 years. Over the last decade, he’s had to defend his business in Washington, D.C. plenty of times before, from the 2018 Cambridge Analytica hearings to the 2021 Congressional hearings focused on disinformation.
But arguably, these are the highest stakes Zuckerberg has faced so far, because what’s on trial is fundamental: The composition of his sprawling, $1.35 trillion market cap business.
The FTC has sued Meta, arguing that the social media giant’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp more than a decade ago were anti-competitive tactics to eliminate rivals. If Meta loses the case, it could be forced to divest the two apps. The case, which has its roots in the first Trump administration and was carried on by Biden FTC Chair Lina Khan, has travelled a long and winding docket (it was initially dismissed and then refiled) to finally make it to trial—with Zuckerberg as the first witness.
While FTC lawyer Daniel Matheson argued that “consumers do not have reasonable alternatives” to Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, Zuckerberg made the case that Meta’s market is far bigger (and more competitive) than the government suggests. On the stand, Zuckerberg dismissed the idea that Facebook was centered on friends, and said that the company had become “more of a broad discovery and entertainment space.”
This case, of course, is far bigger than Meta. On some level, it’s existential for the tech landscape as a whole—at least, when it comes to how the industry currently operates. Whether or not the FTC’s claims about Meta’s anticompetitive motives are correct, the underlying business practice—a tech giant swallowing up an innovative startup—is the way the tech ecosystem has been structured to function, and to reward its various participants, over the past several decades.
For startups, especially those with limited IPO prospects, dreams of a Big Tech exit have been dim for the last several years—and under the Trump administration, investors and entrepreneurs have been eagerly waiting for M&A to roar back to life.
There is some evidence that has been happening—take, for example, Google’s blowout acquisition of Wiz for $32 billion, announced in March and the largest deal in the search giant’s history. And some in Meta’s camp are no doubt holding out hope that Trump will step in and pressure the FTC to settle the case with Zuckerberg (Meta has certainly been lobbying the President).
But the reality is this: If Meta loses this trial, the Big Tech dealmaking that was beginning to thaw is very likely to freeze back over, affecting the whole ecosystem. For startups, the hopes of exiting to a tech giant will appear grimmer, and liquidity-starved VCs will continue to see exits stall while LPs grow increasingly impatient for returns.
Again, none of this is to excuse or condone the monopolistic market concentration that may have been created over time. But given the incentives that are currently built into tech, it does remain natural for giants to look for innovation by acquiring startups.
Zuckerberg is expected to take the stand again on Tuesday, and when he does, he won’t just be making the case for his company. He’ll be making the case for Big Tech M&A being allowed to return to its longstanding modus operandi—for better, or for worse.
Freeze...The Trump administration said yesterday that it's frozen about $2.2 billion in federal funds for Harvard, amid a standoff over demands sent by the government last week. Harvard is the latest prestigious university caught in a crossfire with the Trump administration. These showdowns could create pressure on endowments, traditional limited partners of VC firms.
ICYMI...I recently profiled Conviction founder Sarah Guo. We talked about what it was like to grow up in a startup office, and why prior assumptions don't hold in the age of AI. Read the story here.
See you tomorrow,
Allie Garfinkle
X: @agarfinks
Email: alexandra.garfinkle@fortune.com
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