Silicon Valley Is on a Lobbying Spree in California
Big Tech has grown enormously due to tactics such as price gouging and anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions. New legislation to address these in California faces a stiff and very well-funded resistance.
Financial disclosures show that Big Tech is lobbying hard against a proposed regulatory bill in the California State Senate. With a vote looming, those in the Democratic caucus widely seen as holdouts have received large donations from Silicon Valley. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)
Silicon Valley and other powerful industries have spent millions of dollars to defeat a landmark bill in California that would expand state regulations against monopolies and threaten common business practices of numerous tech giants. The Lever has uncovered that lawmakers who may cast the deciding votes on the legislation in committee have taken thousands in campaign donations from deep-pocketed corporate interests.
From social media giants Facebook and Google to ridesharing apps like Uber, Big Tech has grown its businesses by resorting to a variety of tactics that skirt antitrust laws, such as anticompetitive mergers and acquisitions, price gouging, and pricing discrimination. Only in recent years have these firms’ practices started to face legal scrutiny from federal and state regulators, including a spate of lawsuits to break up Big Tech.
Under current law, California regulators can prosecute antitrust cases only when at least two companies collude to restrain fair competition. The new legislation, now facing a crucial June 30 vote in the Judiciary Committee, would allow the state, for the first time, to begin cracking down on single firm monopolies — when one company dominates a certain industry or uses its large status to unfairly drive out competition.
If the bill passes, regulators would be allowed to bring cases against tech platforms that prioritize their own phone applications — a practice Google and Apple have been accused of — or companies that buy out their competitors to “stamp out competition,” according to a legislative committee analysis of the bill text. The bill would also allow regulators to bring cases against companies that sell products “at a price below the cost of production to ensure that smaller companies must leave the market,” a pricing strategy most notably deployed by Uber in the 2010s to quickly gain market share.
Disclosures show that major tech companies and their industry allies have spent more than $6 million lobbying on the bill and other matters. Many of those same groups have also donated nearly $130,000 combined to the election efforts of Democratic state Sens. Ben Allen, Angelique Ashby, Henry Stern, and Thomas Umberg, the State Senate Judiciary Committee’s chairman.
These four committee members are widely seen as the holdout votes needed to pass the bill, given their opposition to past antitrust legislation that would have prohibited tech platforms promoting their own services over competitors.
However, Allen responded to the Lever’s request for comment, stating that he is “very likely going to be supporting the bill.”
The other three lawmakers did not respond to a request for comment. According to reporting from the American Prospect, Allen and Stern are roommates and tend to vote in sync.
Millions of Lobbying Dollars
The bill, dubbed the COMPETE Act, comes after state lawmakers directed the California Law Revision Commission, an independent state agency tasked with analyzing and recommending changes to state laws, to conduct a study on antitrust laws. After a three year investigation, the commission recommended that the state update its antitrust laws to align with federal laws that allow prosecutions of single-firm monopolies. The bill will officially prohibit “one or more persons from acting in a manner that restrains trade or seeks to monopolize a market,” and sets up ten guidelines for judges to consider when interpreting cases of alleged single-firm monopolies, according to a legislative analysis of the bill.
The bill is supported by a slew of consumer protection advocacy groups, including Consumer Watchdog, the Consumer Federation of California, as well as the California District Attorneys Association, the California Professional Firefighters, and various unions.
“The COMPETE Act is a long overdue attempt to bring California back to its roots,” the American Economic Liberties Project, an anti-monopoly advocacy group, wrote in a press release. “If passed it would mark the most significant shift in state antitrust enforcement in over a century.”
But the bill is “vociferously opposed by the California Chamber of Commerce and dozens of industry trade groups from a wide cross section of California’s economy,” which claim that “the bill is unnecessary, vague, overrides decades of case law, and is a boon to the plaintiff’s bar,” according to the committee’s bill analysis.
Businesses and lobbying groups opposed to the bill have spent more than $4.1 million in the first quarter of 2026 lobbying the state legislature, the Governor’s Office, and the California Law Revision Commission on the bill, antitrust issues, and other matters, disclosures show. Among them, the California Chamber of Commerce, a pro-business lobbying group, spent more than $1.6 million so far this year lobbying on the bill and other matters, and Google has spent more than $284,000.
In a comment letter to the California Law Revision Commission, Google stated that the rise of artificial intelligence has “shown that the tech sector continues to be intensely competitive.” Google claimed that the commission is pushing a “big-is-bad” approach in its recommendations and that “regulating a company based on size without regard to impact on consumers or innovation.”
“We urge the commission to carefully consider the impact of its proposal on consumers, innovation, and the competitive landscape,” the company wrote.
The Chamber of Progress, a tech industry lobbying group, stated in a comment letter that it was concerned about the bill’s potential impact on mergers and acquisitions within the tech world. “Startups, investors, and growing firms depend on acquisition pathways to finance risk-taking, scale new products, and recycle capital into the next generation of companies,” the group wrote.
The Chamber of Progress spent nearly $90,000 so far this year lobbying the legislature on the antitrust bill and other matters.
Additionally, pharmaceutical companies Pfizer and Abbott Laboratories, beer company Anheuser-Busch, utility company Pacific Gas and Electric, and the Walt Disney Company have spent $2 million so far this year lobbying on the bill and other issues — though their position on the antitrust bill is uncertain.
Tens of Thousands in Campaign Donations
According to financial disclosures, Umberg has received more than $73,000 since 2025 in campaign donations from various companies opposed to the bill and from companies that are a member of Technet, a major tech lobbying group that is formally opposed to the bill. He’s received $9,800 dollars from Facebook parent company Meta Platforms, a Technet member that has lobbied on the bill. He’s also received $13,000 from the California Chamber of Commerce’s political action committee, $4,000 from Google, and $2,500 from Technet’s political action committee, disclosures show.
Ashby has received more than $37,000 in campaign donations from similar groups and companies since 2025. The California Chamber of Commerce gave her $2,000, and a small contributor political action committee linked to the Chamber gave $5,551 to her election efforts. Google gave $2,900, and Amazon, another member of Technet, gave $2,600.
In a June 22 letter addressed to Umberg, Technet, the California Chamber of Commerce, and dozens of other groups said that the legislation would have a “chilling effect on standard business practices that have always been viewed as legal and procompetitive, and will increase litigation and impose significant cost on consumers as well as all businesses operating in California.”
Earlier this year, many of these same business interests opposed a separate antitrust bill with similar aims introduced by state Sen. Scott Wiener (D). Although the bill passed the Judiciary Committee in April, numerous senators indicated they would not support the legislation during a full floor vote.
At the Judiciary Committee hearing for the prior bill, Umberg said, “It is my point of view that we should, in California, give those [antitrust] experiments more time to be refined both in Europe and in Japan, and for those reasons I’m not going to be supportive today.”
Allen went further, declaring that “I’m going to vote no on the floor. . . . if you don’t get these issues [in the bill] addressed and actively work to kill the bill.” Allen recently introduced his own antitrust legislation that would close price-gouging loopholes and expand who can enforce California’s current antitrust laws.
Ashby voted against Wiener’s bill, stating that if the bill is not revised, “it feels like chaos would ensue upon implementation.”
Stern did not record a vote for Wiener’s bill.
Passing the COMPETE Act will be a boon for small businesses and will be a check on some of the Golden State’s largest businesses, said Lee Hepner, senior legal counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project.
“California is the closest it has been in a quarter century to closing a loophole that has shielded the state’s largest corporations for actions that drive up prices, depress wages, and restrict business innovation,” he said. “While the federal administration hands out favors to the wealthy and politically connected, the COMPETE Act represents a groundswell among state lawmakers and enforcers to pick up the slack.”