Y Combinator, one of the world’s most prolific startup accelerators, sent a letter on Wednesday urging the Trump administration to publicly support the European Digital Markets Act (DMA), a broad legislation, Aiming to crack the market capabilities of opening up Big Tech.
DMA designated six tech companies as “gatekeepers” of the Internet – Letters, Amazon, Apple, bytedance, meta and Microsoft – and restricted these technology master holes to engage in anti-competitive strategies on its platform to support interoperability. The law applies in May 2023, It has had a significant impact on American technology companies.
In a letter to the White House Posted on X Luther Lowe, head of public policy at YC, believes DMA should not be integrated with other European technology legislation, which U.S. officials often criticize as overbearing.
Instead, YC noted in the letter that the spirit of European DMA is consistent with the values that promote rather than hinder American innovation.
“[W]e respectfully urged the White House to readjust the position on European digital regulations, setting clear boundaries between measures that hinder innovation and measures to promote Europe.
It’s no surprise that YC will appear in the public’s clear support for DMA. After all, the accelerator sells itself as a champion of “small technology” (an ecosystem of U.S. risk-backed technology startups).
In the letter, YC noted that DMA opens up key avenues to create opportunities for U.S. startups in AI, search and consumer applications and prevent large tech companies from phasing out smaller businesses.
In particular, YC points to Apple in the letter Reportedly postponed Siri version of its LLM-powered to 2027A few years later, competitors bring generative AI voice assistants to the market. YC believes this represents a lack of competitive pressure and points out that third-party developers of AI voice assistants cannot integrate their services into Apple’s operating system
YC may put Big Tech into practice to complete its reported anti-competitive behavior and shoot at Apple, which believes will damage the venture-backed startup ecosystem. But YC and other VCs that are allegedly consistent with technology actually become very influential in Washington.
Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z), who published the “Small Tech Agenda” last year, spent millions of dollars trying to influence policy wars at the federal and local levels. According to Open SecretA16Z’s contribution to the 2024 U.S. election cycle totaled $89 million. YC, still the smaller player in the political arena of the United States, Donations are about $2 million.
What is unclear here is how the Trump administration will react to the DMA in the long run, and what YC agrees about it.
President Trump said in January he would Protect U.S. tech companies from overly enthusiastic European regulators. But Trump has Historically, large tech companies have been hard Like Apple, Google and Meta.
At the Paris AI Action Summit in February, Vice President JD Vance criticized some EU laws targeting tech companies, including the Digital Services Act and the General Data Protection Regulation. However, Vance does not mention DMA, which is more narrowly targeting the practice of the anti-competitive technology industry.
Lowe told TechCrunch last year In strict activities DMA “is not perfect, but at least they’re trying to figure out how we can curb the most despicable forms of self-challenge in these big companies.”
Lowe did not immediately respond to TechCrunch’s request for comment.
