Big Tech’s growing use of “acquihire” deals — arrangements in which technology giants hire the founders and senior staff of start-ups rather than acquire the companies themselves — is likely to come under increased regulatory scrutiny, according to Olivier Guersent, the outgoing Director-General of the European Commission’s competition unit.
Speaking in an interview with Reuters ahead of his retirement on Thursday, Guersent said acquihires, once considered outside the scope of traditional merger rules, are increasingly being examined as potential transactions subject to EU oversight.
“It is important to preserve effective competition,” Guersent said, noting that the Commission is working with national competition authorities to use their powers to refer below-threshold deals to Brussels for review.
Several EU member states — including Denmark, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Slovenia, Lithuania, and Latvia — have so-called “call-in powers” allowing them to refer cases that may otherwise escape EU jurisdiction. “Within the ECN [European Competition Network], we are actively encouraging their use,” Guersent added.
High-Profile Acquihire Cases
Guersent pointed to several recent high-value deals as examples of the acquihire trend. Microsoft struck a $650 million deal to hire most of the staff of AI start-up Inflection, including its co-founders. Google recruited employees from chatbot developer Character.AI and, in July, hired staff from AI code-generation start-up Windsurf. Amazon hired the co-founders and part of the team from AI firm Adept in June 2024. Meta recruited the CEO of Scale AI shortly after making a multi-billion-dollar investment in the company.
Guersent argued that such staff transfers can amount to mergers, as employees are a core asset of innovative start-ups, and their loss may eliminate future competitive threats to Big Tech.
The Digital Markets Act Legacy
Guersent, who played a central role in drafting and enforcing the EU’s Digital Markets Act (DMA), said the regulation is already reshaping the digital landscape.
“It made a difference in fields in which decades of antitrust enforcement have not managed to make a difference,” he noted. However, he acknowledged that the impact has been uneven, pointing to contrasting responses by Apple, which has made adjustments to its ecosystem, and Meta, which has resisted more forcefully.
As Guersent steps down after a 33-year career in competition policy, the Commission is expected to continue expanding its scrutiny of non-traditional transactions in the tech sector, signaling a potential new phase in EU merger control.
