HPE says the DoJ’s logic is “essentially flawed,” and plans to “vigorously defend the transaction in court docket”
In January 2024, HPE introduced its intent to amass AI-native networking specialist Juniper Networks with the purpose of bolstering its product choices to help rising AI infrastructure demand and competitors. Quick ahead a 12 months and 6 days and the U.S. Division of Justice (DoJ) sued to dam the deal saying the mix “would get rid of fierce head-to-head competitors between the businesses, elevate costs, scale back innovation, and diminish selection for scores of American companies and establishments.”
DoJ particularly utilized its anti-competitive argument to the corporations’ WLAN companies. Appearing Assistant Legal professional Basic Omeed A. Assefi from the DoJ’s Antitrust Division stated in a press release, “HPE and Juniper are profitable corporations. However moderately than proceed to compete as rivals within the WLAN market, they search to consolidate—rising focus in an already concentrated market. The menace this merger poses isn’t theoretical. Very important industries in our nation—together with American hospitals and small companies—depend on wi-fi networks to finish their missions. This proposed merger would considerably scale back competitors and weaken innovation, leading to massive segments of the American economic system paying extra for much less from wi-fi expertise suppliers.”
HPE and Juniper, in a press release, known as DoJ’s “evaluation of this acquisition…essentially flawed…We are going to vigorously defend in opposition to [DoJ’s] overreaching interpretation of antitrust legal guidelines and can reveal how this transaction will present clients with higher innovation and selection, positively change the dynamics in teh networking market by enhancing competitors, and strengthen the spine of U.S. networking infrastructure.”
Additional, HPE and Juniper make the purpose that the mix will bolster America’s international aggressive posture in “core tech” which it describes as supporting “the essential infrastructure that permits our complete trendy economic system and consists of important applied sciences like large-scale compute, semiconductors, and networking…This transaction will create a strong U.S.-based supplier of core expertise infrastructure that may assist to guard in opposition to nationwide safety dangers within the international expertise market.”
That to say, on condition that the previous and present administrations have spoken at size about, and supplied subsidies for, growth of U.S. technological management in every part from semiconductor manufacturing to Open RAN, why would the DoJ transfer to dam the deal?
As to the AI of all of it, HPE and Juniper say, “This proposed acquisition will present clients of all sizes with a contemporary, safe community constructed with AI and for AI to make sure a greater consumer and operator expertise, and can create extra competitors, not much less.”
