Europe's regulators are gearing up for another round with Big Tech, and this time Meta Platforms Inc. (META) is in the crosshairs. The European Commission is planning to launch an antitrust investigation into how the company rolled out its "Meta AI" assistant within WhatsApp, according to a Financial Times report published Thursday.
The announcement could come within days, though the timing remains fluid, according to officials familiar with the plans. What makes this investigation particularly interesting is the legal framework being used. Rather than pursuing this under the Digital Markets Act, Europe's newer regulatory weapon designed specifically for tech giants, the Commission is dusting off its traditional antitrust toolkit.
Why Traditional Antitrust Matters
Regulators want to examine whether Meta's integration of AI-powered features inside WhatsApp plays by EU competition rules. The decision to use classic antitrust law instead of the DMA suggests the Commission sees this as a potentially different type of competitive concern than the market-dominance issues the DMA was designed to address.
Neither the European Commission nor Meta immediately responded to requests for comment on the report.
Meta launched its AI assistant in WhatsApp across Europe in March, following earlier delays caused by the continent's notoriously complex regulatory environment. The tool does what you'd expect from a modern AI assistant: it generates prompts and offers text suggestions directly within your chats, trying to make conversations more efficient or creative, depending on how you look at it.
Part of a Broader Tech Crackdown
If this investigation moves forward, it'll join an increasingly crowded field of EU actions targeting American tech companies. The Commission has already opened DMA-related probes into Alphabet (GOOGL) (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), and Microsoft (MSFT). The message from Brussels has been remarkably consistent: European regulators plan to keep enforcing their digital regulatory regime regardless of criticism from Washington or potential political pushback.
This isn't just regulatory theater. The EU has shown it's willing to levy massive fines and force operational changes on companies that don't comply with its rules. For Meta, which has already faced multiple regulatory headaches in Europe around privacy and data use, this represents yet another front in an ongoing battle over how American tech companies operate on the continent.
Meta's AI Spending Spree
The investigation comes as Meta pours billions of dollars into artificial intelligence development, racing to keep pace with competitors across the tech industry. The company, which also owns Facebook and Instagram, has made AI a central pillar of its strategy under Mark Zuckerberg's leadership.
So far, investors haven't been too worried about regulatory risks. Meta (META) shares have climbed 6.74% year-to-date, pushing the company's valuation to roughly $1.6 trillion. The stock closed down 1.16% at $639.60 on Wednesday.
From a fundamental perspective, Meta shows strong growth and quality metrics, though value scores remain weak and recent price trends across multiple timeframes have turned negative. That suggests investors are paying up for growth potential while acknowledging near-term headwinds, which regulatory investigations certainly qualify as.
The broader question is whether these European investigations will actually change how Meta and other tech giants deploy AI features, or whether they'll simply become another cost of doing business in one of the world's largest markets. Given the billions at stake in the AI race, companies like Meta may decide that paying fines or making limited adjustments is worth maintaining their competitive positioning, even if it means ongoing friction with European regulators.
