Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Lena Khan changed her outreach strategy on Friday, meeting with tech founders and investors at Y Combinator, a startup fueling station in San Francisco. This marked another high-profile engagement with the tech community, following her low-key attempt to do so in New York in June.
Accompanied by tech workers and venture capitalists, Khan reiterated her concerns about artificial intelligence (AI), an area that President Biden’s executive order issued this week tasked her agency with investigating. She worries that “key inputs to this technology may already be controlled by a handful of companies, and we may already be seeing bottlenecks that could impede innovation and competition.”
Khan’s visit to San Francisco comes as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is stepping up its scrutiny of big tech companies. The agency is currently reviewing Microsoft’s $69 billion deal to buy Activision Blizzard and has sued Meta to block its acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Within Limited.
Despite the FTC’s tough stance on antitrust enforcement, Khan has gone out of her way to act like a friend to industry workers.” In one of her speeches, she said, “We’re very focused on using our laws to protect everyone: consumers and workers.” The FTC’s goals are perfectly aligned with innovators and entrepreneurs.”
Large tech companies, notably Amazon and Meta, see Khan as an obstacle to their growth. Shortly after she took office, both companies tried to get her to recuse herself from any antitrust investigations into her behavior, and documents at the time show that they believed her approach was unfair.
Khan’s shift in outreach strategy suggests that she is seeking to connect with the tech community while remaining focused on antitrust enforcement. Whether she can successfully balance those two goals remains to be seen.
