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NEW YORK (AP) — OpenAI received a subpoena from several states as part of a probe into the safety of users of its chatbot as it prepares to offer stock to the public for the first time.

The company behind the popular chatbot, ChatGPT, said it will respond to the inquiry “constructively” and that it already has in place measures to protect its customers.

“AI is a new and powerful technology, and we work every day to safely bring its benefits to people in a responsible way,” an emailed statement from a spokesperson said. “We take the concerns raised by state attorneys general seriously.”

OpenAI has drawn criticism for ChatGPT allegedly offering encouraging words to users thinking of killing themselves or engaging criminal acts. It also has come under scrutiny for how its uses health data and other personal information of its customers.

On Thursday, the company was sued by a Canadian blaming the chatbot for her daughter’s decision to hang herself. Earlier in June, the Florida attorney general sued the company after two separate shootings where alleged gunmen were reported to have asked ChatGPT questions while planning their crimes.

OpenAI said in a statement that its models repeatedly encouraged the individuals to seek real-world support, including from mental health professionals. The company also said it has cooperated with law enforcement in both shooting cases.

The new probe comes just a few day after it filed documents with U.S. security regulators for a highly anticipated initial public offering of stock. Artificial intelligence rival SpaceX celebrated its own IPO on Friday. The rocket maker founded by Elon Musk also runs an AI business responsible for a rival chatbot called Grok.

How governments should respond to the potential for good and possible dangerous of AI is becoming a big political issue.

Regulators Europe opened investigations into Musk’s Grok over antisemitic content and sexualized material, include deepfake nudes. And another chatbot company preparing an IPO, Anthropic, was directed by the Trump administration Friday to shut down two of its online models to users abroad for national security reasons.

The OpenAI subpoena was earlier reported by The Wall Street Journal.

The Associated Press sent emails to a dozen state attorneys general Saturday asking for details of the probe but has not received any responses.

In its statement, OpenAI highlighted measures it has taken to keep children using its chatbot safe.

“Today’s ChatGPT includes a more protective experience for minors and people experiencing difficult situations, with safeguards that direct them to real-world resources and trusted human contacts,” the statement read in part. “We believe kids should be treated like kids, which is why we built age prediction, released parental tools to guide their children’s use of AI, and disallowed advertising that targets kids.”

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By Munsif Vengattil and Aditya Kalra

BENGALURU, June 13 (Reuters) – An Indian pollution regulator has alleged wastewater discharged from a Tata components factory for Apple’s iPhone has contaminated the groundwater for nearby farms and warned of a forced shutdown unless Tata gives a satisfactory explanation.

India’s Tata Electronics is central to Apple’s push to diversify iPhone production beyond China and is the second-biggest supplier to Apple in South Asia after Taiwan’s Foxconn.

The Tata plant under investigation is in Hosur in southern Tamil Nadu state and makes back panels and other components for iPhones. Farmland owners near the plant had complained for months to the Tamil Nadu Pollution Control Board that wastewater from the factory was contaminating their land and open wells.

The complaints led to five state inspections between December 2025 and May 2026, according to details from a previously unreported regulatory notice dated May 25 and reviewed by Reuters.

The inspections found that Tata discharged wastewater into a rainwater harvesting pond inside its facility and that the pond overflowed to contaminate “groundwater in the open wells located in the adjacent agricultural lands”, the pollution board’s warning notice to Tata said.

Tata had not taken any corrective actions on instructions issued by the pollution board in a previous letter dated December 23, 2025, it said in the three-page notice.

Tata Electronics told Reuters in a statement it had commissioned an independent analysis through an accredited laboratory and that the study determined the company was “in full compliance with all regulatory norms”.

Tata said it was “committed to responsible business practices and protection of the environment and local communities”, and that it had responded to pollution authorities, although giving no further details.

The pollution board in its May notice asked Tata to explain why power to the unit should not be cut and the unit closed for its alleged breach of the rules.

Apple, which has strict rules on how its suppliers handle wastewater, and the Tamil Nadu government did not respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

APPLE’S STRUGGLES IN INDIA

Companies have often faced disciplinary action from pollution authorities in India. In 2024, Mercedes-Benz improved wastewater and air pollution management at its only car factory in India after officials detected lapses in compliance with environmental law.

India’s environment ministry told parliament in February that 4.4% of 544,364 industries were found non-compliant with environmental standards in the last five years, and 3,600 were shut down by pollution control departments.

The Tata notice adds to a series of issues that have dogged Apple’s India supply chain. A fire at Tata’s Hosur plant in September 2024 halted iPhone component production briefly, while a fire in September 2023 at former supplier Pegatron’s iPhone plant shut production for days.

In 2024, a Reuters investigation found that major Apple supplier Foxconn systematically excluded married women from iPhone assembly jobs at one of its plants in India, although the company said at the time that it complied with all laws.

India is projected to make 26% of all iPhones globally in 2026, from just 6% four years ago, according to research firm Counterpoint.

(Reporting by Munsif Vengattil and Aditya Kalra; Editing by Tom Hogue)

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NEW YORK (AP) — While you might want to ignore all the hubbub around SpaceX, Elon Musk and IPOs, your 401(k) likely can’t.

SpaceX is now worth $2.1 trillion after its stock launched 19.2% higher in its debut on Wall Street. Whether or not you believe it deserves to be worth more than Exxon Mobil, Bank of America and Coca-Cola combined, the collective market does. And if SpaceX maintains that big a value, it will join some high-profile stock indexes.

Many of these indexes don’t care about how realistic a company’s growth plans are or who its CEO is. They’re simply trying to show how slices of the market, or the whole thing, are performing. And if SpaceX is big enough to meet the qualifications to join those indexes, whether it’s in a few weeks or a year, it will gain entry.

That matters for investors and their 401(k) accounts because they’re depending more than ever on funds that simply mimic these indexes. It’s a lower-cost way to invest, allowing savers to keep more of their investments. Partly because of that, such index funds have usually proven to be better performers than funds that try to pick and choose individual stocks.

Just one in five actively managed U.S. stock funds survived and beat their average index peer over the last decade, at 21%, according to Morningstar’s data through 2025. Such disparities in performance meant investors had more money invested in U.S. index funds than actively managed ones beginning in 2024, and the gap has only grown since then.

Here’s a look at what’s going on:

They’re things the investment industry has created to answer the question: What is the market doing? It’s otherwise tough to answer quickly when the U.S. market has thousands of stocks moving in different directions at any moment.

The S&P 500 is perhaps the most famous and influential index. It tracks 500 of the biggest U.S. stocks, and trillions of dollars in investments are either directly mimicking it or at least benchmarking themselves against it.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is well known because it’s been around since the 19th century, but it tracks only 30 big stocks so Wall Street pays it little attention.

Because index funds are the way so many investors put money into the stock market, companies want to be part of indexes. Stocks can see a big jump in their prices after S&P Dow Jones Indices, Nasdaq, FTSE Russell or other companies announce they’ll be joining their indexes.

The investment industry has created funds, including both traditional mutual funds and exchange-traded funds, to track almost every kind of index. More than 1,000 index funds were available at the end of last year, according to the Investment Company Institute. Of them, 185 tracked the S&P 500.

Nasdaq changed its rules to allow some huge companies to join its Nasdaq 100 index after just 15 trading days. That’s a break from the past, where it would wait until each December to add new members in an annual reconstitution to make sure it includes the 100 largest non-financial companies on the Nasdaq.

Some popular funds track the Nasdaq 100 index, including the QQQ exchange-traded fund from Invesco that has roughly $477 billion in total investments. That means QQQ holders could soon own shares of SpaceX, without doing anything on their own.

Anthropic and OpenAI are two other huge AI-related companies looking to sell their own stocks soon on a U.S. exchange for the first time. Their IPOs could potentially make each worth close to $1 trillion.

It used to be that companies would have an IPO long before they got that big. But SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI swelled to tremendous sizes thanks to dollars from private investors, including pension funds, companies and rich investors, away from the public market.

That’s forcing the reconsideration for the investment industry about how quickly to add companies to indexes that they say track the biggest companies.

The company behind the S&P 500 is not making changes to allow SpaceX and other “mega” IPOs faster entry into the index. For it, a stock needs to trade on an eligible exchange for at least 12 months before it can join the index.

Not only that, S&P Dow Jones Indices also requires companies to have made a profit in its most recent quarter and over the sum of its last four quarters.

SpaceX lost $4.9 billion last year and another $4.3 billion through the first three months of 2026. It acknowledges that it “may not achieve profitability in the future.” Over the long term, a stock’s price tends to track with how much profit the company is making.

Officials from pension funds for firefighters, teachers and other workers in California and New York sent a letter to SpaceX last month decrying its corporate governance, including how much power Musk will hold over the company through his ownership of a special class of stock with more voting power.

They said they could become owners of SpaceX stock because they hold index funds.

If Musk is able to control so much of the voting power on the board of directors, it would make him tremendously powerful atop SpaceX, “essentially making him unfireable without his own consent,” the CEO of California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the New York state comptroller and the New York City comptroller wrote in their letter.

Index funds track indexes. And if a stock is in an index, the index fund will buy it, even if investors may not like it.

Tesla has remained in the S&P 500 even though critics called it overvalued for years, for example, and Musk’s electric-vehicle company has grown to become one of Wall Street’s 10 biggest companies.

Some indexes say they will not include companies that have poor corporate governance standards or other narrowed criteria, but investors need to look for them.

The S&P 500 ESG index famously kicked Tesla out in 2022, for example.

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A first-of-its-kind law in New York could force 3D printers sold for homes and business to come equipped with technology blocking them from making guns.

The new requirement, also under consideration in California, attempts to thwart the latest technique for producing untraceable “ghost guns” that have turned up in crimes. But there are questions about whether the technology can work and concerns about its effect on personal privacy and constitutional rights.

About one-third of U.S. states already have taken steps to ban or regulate build-it-yourself firearms that lack serial numbers and evade the background checks required to purchase guns from federally licensed dealers. What makes the new effort unique is that it targets the equipment used to produce the firearms, not the people who make them.

The blocking technology being pushed in two of the nation’s most populous states has the potential to set industry standards for 3D printers. It also could serve as a model for other Democratic-led states wanting to add to their gun regulations, which often already ban certain semiautomatic weapons and allow firearms to be temporarily confiscated from people deemed to pose a threat to themselves or others.

Three-dimensional printers have become increasingly common over the past couple of decades.

Since 2012, the number of 3D printers worldwide has grown from an estimated 30,000 to over 3 million while the industry’s value has multiplied from around $2 billion to $26 billion annually, said Bill Decker, executive chairman of the Association of 3D Printing. Though high-end printers cost thousands of dollars, some 3D printers now can be bought for as little as several hundred dollars.

The devices can make toys, prosthetic limbs and even airplane parts. They also can make firearms — or the pieces necessary to assemble them — using digital designs available online. Homemade guns that lack serial numbers often are called “ghost guns,” because they are hard for law enforcement officers to trace.

Firearms made with 3D printers are increasingly being used in crimes, according to a U.S. Department of Justice report released last year. The number of privately made guns recovered in crimes and submitted to federal authorities rose from about 1,600 in 2017 to nearly 27,500 in 2023, though the report didn’t specify how many came from 3D printers.

In a high-profile New York case, police say a 3D-printed gun likely was used to kill UnitedHealthcare’s CEO in 2024.

A New York law signed last month and a bill in the California Legislature both would direct panels of experts to come up with standards for firearm blueprint detection algorithms. The technology would analyze every design submitted for 3D printing, compare it to a digital library of firearm parts, and reject those that are similar.

Though the study process would start now, the mandate that 3D printers come equipped with firearm blocking technology wouldn’t begin until 2029 — or later, in New York’s case, if the study group determines it’s not yet feasible.

The concept is a bit like a smartphone app that identifies trees or flowers from an uploaded photo, said Solomon Diamond, an associate engineering professor at Dartmouth College who was among several experts at a recent online seminar about the legislation.

For 3D printers, one possible method could use a geometric analysis of shapes, dimensions and other structural features to reject print projects that closely resemble firearm parts.

“Geometric search is mature, it’s deployed, it is ready to be applied to this problem,” said Julian Chultarsky, a technical account manager at Physna, a Columbus, Ohio-based company that develops such technology.

The Association of 3D Printing supports the legislation in New York and California, but “it’s not going to work,” Decker said. “It’s more of a political statement than anything else.”

Criminals still will come up with ways to make guns from 3D printers, either by altering their designs or taking their printing projects elsewhere, Decker said.

The more aggressive the technology becomes, the more likely that it also blocks unintended items, said Rory Mir, director of open access and technology community engagement at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights group. Some harmless pipes might look like gun parts, or an S-shaped wall hanger might resemble an auto sear trigger used to modify a semiautomatic weapon into a machine gun.

“These sort of censorship algorithms don’t work, and they wind up capturing and blocking a lot of lawful speech,” Mir said.

If print instructions are submitted for a cloud-based artificial intelligence search, it also risks the privacy of people’s artistic and proprietary creations, Mir said.

Gun safety advocates say 3D printers have created a new pathway for people who cannot legally purchase firearms — like children or convicted felons — to nonetheless obtain them. Eleven states already generally prohibit 3D-printed guns, and six additional states require them to receive serial numbers, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.

Blocking the actual 3D printing of firearms could make it harder for people to ignore such laws.

“3D printing really is the new frontier of the fight against ghost guns,” said Samuel Levy, director of policy advocacy at Everytown for Gun Safety.

The National Rifle Association might partly agree with that assertion, though it disagrees with the policy.

“Despite desperate fear-mongering campaigns, homemade firearms are nothing new — they are a proud, time-honored American tradition dating back to the founding of our Republic,” John Commerford, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. He added that “these measures only restrict responsible Americans — who do follow the law — from participating in constitutionally protected activities.”

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WASHINGTON, June 13 (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump in a social media post on Saturday said a deal with Iran was scheduled to be signed on Sunday and that the Strait of Hormuz would be immediately “open to all” after it was signed.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey)

The Latest:

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By Shashwat Chauhan

June 13 (Reuters) – SpaceX roared into markets this past week with a valuation of more than $2 trillion, surpassing two members of Wall Street’s “Magnificent Seven” and raising a key question: Does the Mag 7 name still fit? And if not, what should replace it?

The IPO, the biggest in U.S. history, vaulted SpaceX’s value above two Mag 7 members: CEO Elon Musk’s other company, Tesla, and Meta Platforms. With trillion-dollar contenders such as OpenAI and Anthropic waiting in the IPO wings, the club may soon need a name change, analysts said.

With SpaceX’s arrival, “it becomes very hard to keep using Mag 7 as the clean shorthand for market leadership because one of the most important companies in the world would immediately be outside the label,” said Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities.

These groupings are not formal market categories, but shorthand labels coined by strategists, investors and the media to capture the hottest big stocks at a given moment. Such monikers have a long history, ranging from the “Nifty 50” of the 1960s and 1970s to the “Four Horsemen” of the late 1990s dot-com boom.

The SpaceX IPO has set off a race to devise the next cool acronym.

One sobriquet gaining traction on X is “MANGOS”, which stands for Meta, Anthropic, Nvidia, Alphabet, OpenAI and SpaceX. That grouping is far from standardized, with some interpreting the “A” as Apple, currently the third most-valuable U.S.-listed firm.

“We are already referring to it internally and the industry is picking up on it as well,” said Aga Kuplinska, SVP of product development at Tidal Financial Group, which helps asset managers roll out ETFs.

Dan Boardman-Weston, CEO at BRI Wealth Management, is going another way, suggesting “Magna Atoms” – the Magnificent Seven plus SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic.

THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN RIDE

The “Magnificent Seven” term was coined by BofA Global Research Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett in late 2023 to describe seven heavyweight technology-related stocks: Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla and Microsoft.

With an AI boom driving stock markets to record highs and the sudden appearance of new trillion-dollar companies, the leaderboard is often in a state of flux.

In a May 22 note, BofA wrote about the “AI Big 10,” adding Broadcom, Micron Technology and Advanced Micro Devices to the original seven, reflecting the semiconductor rally of the past year. That group accounts for more than 40% of the S&P 500’s weight, according to LSEG data.

The labels have evolved before – from FANG to FAANG to the Magnificent Seven – each tracking shifts in companies that led the market.

FANG covered Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. FAANG added Apple, and Magnificent Seven dropped Netflix while adding Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, each shift reflecting changes at the top of the market.

“It’s been Mag 7 for several years now. Maybe the markets are excited for something new,” said Dustin Thackeray, chief investment officer at Crewe Advisors.

To be sure, not everyone expects the old label to ride off into the sunset.

“The Magnificent Seven label is not going away,” said Dave Mazza, CEO of Roundhill Investments. “It is too embedded in how investors and the media view large-cap tech leadership. What you will likely see is additive terminology rather than replacement.”

(Reporting by Shashwat Chauhan, Purvi Agarwal, Twesha Dikshit and Niket Nishant in Bengaluru; Editing by Sweta Singh, Colin Barr, Saumyadeb Chakrabarty and David Gaffen)

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By Alessandro Parodi and Ben Makori

LONDON, June 13 (Reuters) – Omega’s Constellation watch has been flashed in campaigns, movies and at the Met Gala by stars like George Clooney and Nicole Kidman, turning it into a symbol of luxury and glamour.

But with gold prices near record highs struck in January, some such classic watches are being melted down as the value of their metal content outstrips their resale worth.

Used models by the likes of Omega and LVMH’s TAG Heuer are most hit by the trend, according to Reuters interviews with over a dozen traders, industry experts, and investment advisers.

British dealer Jon White of Gold Traders melted down an 18-carat late-1970s Constellation in excellent condition in May, one of dozens of mainstream luxury watches he has had scrapped this year as demand for investment gold has risen.

“Beautiful watch. But in reality, had the customer consigned that to auction, what would they have achieved?” White, who also manages an auction house, told Reuters.

The gold content of the Constellation watch, one of many models produced by Swatch-owned Omega, was worth £5,750 ($7,749), 35% more than its estimated £4,000-4,500 auction value, White said.

James Lamdin, founder of Watches of Switzerland’s second-hand unit Analog Shift, said melting was “primarily happening with contemporary pre-owned and also with older vintage watches that are not already collectible.”

Spokespersons for Swatch and Rolex said they would not comment for this story. LVMH, Richemont, Patek Philippe and Audemars Piguet did not respond to requests for comment.

LIQUID GOLD

Gold prices surged to a record $5,600 an ounce in January as geopolitical concerns and trade worries pushed investors towards safe-haven precious metals. Gold now hovers around $4,200 per ounce, almost double its 2024 average.

The market price for used watches has not moved in the same way, however.

“I find it very sad, because obviously once something has been melted, it’s gone forever,” said Adrian Hailwood, a specialist in horological history.

There are no official figures showing how many luxury watches are being melted. World Gold Council data shows overall gold recycling in the first quarter rose 5% to 366 tonnes, while gold jewellery demand rose 31% in value to $47 billion.

Watches can hold anything from a sliver of gold to more than 200 grams, meaning their scrap value can run into tens of thousands of dollars. In an Omega Constellation, the gold can be found in the case and the strap.

With gold expected to reach between $5,400 and $6,300 an ounce this year, the pressure to dismantle some watches will continue, especially as traders that resell them must cover costs and the expense of providing a warranty.

New watches that are over-produced might also be melted down.

“I’ve seen a lot of totally mediocre watches get melted down,” said Lamdin. “There’s a lot of unsold overstock in the Swiss market. And those watches are basically brand new, unworn, and they’re just getting stripped down… they made too many of them.”

“But when you have something that’s vintage and rare and has some story or some patina, that’s where it becomes a short-sighted tragedy.”

THE RESALE TRAP

High-end brands that tightly manage new production like privately owned Patek Philippe and Rolex command the highest premiums over melt value, three industry experts said.

For some models “the wait lists are astronomical. You’re talking anything from two to eight years,” said Simon Lazarus, head of PR and content at online luxury watch platform Chrono Hunter.

Rolex accounted last year for 61% of the sales value of new Swiss watches priced above 3,000 Swiss francs ($3,770), up from 57% in 2023 despite lower volumes, according to Vontobel.

Less exclusive brands like TAG Heuer, Breitling and Omega struggle to command high new retail prices, however, as buyers can buy a second-hand timepiece for much less.

Models like Omega’s Speedmaster often depreciate sharply once sold, exposing them to scrapping, three experts said.

TO SELL OR NOT TO SELL

Higher gold prices motivated retired New York engineer Mitchell Talisman to sell two gold watches and a chain containing a combined 35 grams of gold with 58% purity for $2,660 cash in December.

“I’d had a bunch of stuff sitting in a safety deposit box for over 10 years,” he told Reuters.

For some owners however, the idea of selling a watch only for it to be melted by a dealer is too much to bear.

“It may be a family piece, it may be their first watch,” said Hailwood.

“They don’t like the idea of it being destroyed, so they keep it.”

($1 = 0.7421 pounds)

($1 = 0.7873 Swiss francs)

(Reporting by Alessandro Parodi in Gdansk, Editing by Lisa Jucca and Alexandra Hudson)

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June 12 (Reuters) – Target on Friday said its shareholders rejected a proposal to separate the roles of board chair and executive leadership, with 38.1% votes in support — above the 29% level achieved by a similar measure in 2024.

The outcome allows former CEO Brian Cornell to continue as executive chair, a role he assumed after handing over the CEO position to Michael Fiddelke.

Here are a few details from the big-box retailer’s annual general meeting:

• All 12 director nominees were elected at the June 10 meeting, Target said.

• The results, certified by independent inspector Carideo Group, were based on about 392.5 million shares voted, representing roughly 86.4% of shares outstanding, the company added.

• On Wednesday, Reuters reported the shareholder proposal was rejected, alongside two others, including measures related to pesticide disclosures and microfiber emissions, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the vote.

• The governance proposal marks the latest in a series of attempts by investors to split Target’s leadership structure. Six similar proposals since 2014 at Target have failed, with support peaking in 2014 at 45.8%.

• The retailer has been grappling with slower growth relative to rivals Walmart and Costco, amid shifting consumer spending and aggressive pricing competition.

• In May, the company reported its quarterly results, which showed signs of recovery, but Target has cautioned that a tough macroeconomic environment could continue to pressure demand.

(Reporting by Sanskriti Shekhar in Bengaluru; Editing by Joyjeet Das)

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(Removes erroneous word ‘later’ in paragraph 3)

BEIJING, June 13 (Reuters) – China is “strongly dissatisfied” with a U.S. move to add several large Chinese companies to the Pentagon’s list of firms it says are aiding China’s military, the commerce ministry said on Saturday.

The foreign ministry has also expressed concern about the U.S. Defense Department’s long-awaited update to its list on Monday, which included such top technology names as e-commerce giant Alibaba, internet search provider Baidu and automakers BYD and NIO.

The list also includes the world’s largest solar panel makers: Trina Solar and JA Solar Technology.

The list includes a broad swathe of China’s top technology firms key to advancing Beijing’s military and industrial prowess, reflecting Washington’s security concerns amid intense geopolitical competition between the countries.

“China is strongly dissatisfied and firmly opposes this,” the commerce ministry said in a statement. “China urges the U.S. to immediately stop its erroneous practices, immediately withdraw relevant measures and return to the correct track of building a constructive strategic and stable China-U.S. relationship.”

If Chinese firms are not treated fairly, it said, Beijing will “inevitably retaliate resolutely and forcefully”.

The Pentagon update supersedes a list from early 2025 and comes a ‌month after Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping met in Beijing and maintained a delicate trade-war truce.

The ministry statement said the Pentagon’s move “ignored the consensus” reached between the two leaders.

Under U.S. law, the Defense Department will be prohibited from contracting directly with companies on the list and restricted from buying their products or services through third parties from 2027.

(Reporting by Beijing newsroom and Greg Torode in Hong Kong;)

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An investigation by the U.S. Justice Department into Paramount Skydance’s proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery has determined that the mammoth Hollywood media merger is not likely to harm competition in the industry or be harmful for consumers.

The agency said Friday that it closed its probe into the deal, with regulators at its antitrust division concluding that the impact of the merger “will be to increase competition across the media and entertainment ecosystem, with benefits for American consumers and workers.”

David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance reached a deal to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in late February. Paramount’s victory came after months of negotiations and a rival bid by Netflix that ultimately fell short. Paramount was bought by Skydance last year.

The companies contend that merging will be good for growth in the industry and give consumers access to more content, particularly if the HBO Max and Paramount+ libraries are combined. But critics have decried what further consolidation could mean in an industry already controlled by just a few major players.

Among the potential market impacts from the merger, regulators weighed whether the deal would hurt competition in video streaming. They concluded that the merger would likely increase competition by giving customers a more “robust competitive alternative” to larger video streaming alternatives.

The agency also determined that YouTube, TikTok and other social media portals that also offer video streaming content “do not appear to be competitive substitutes here under well-established antitrust legal precedents, although they compete broadly for consumer attention.”

Regulators also concluded that the merger is not likely to harm competition for so-called linear television, citing a strong competition for live programming.

On the question of competition in Hollywood, regulators found that the combination of two major film studio operators is not likely to harm competition in studio development, production or distribution of films for theatrical release.

“Instead, evidence shows extensive competition within the industry, which has generated greater output and diversity of film offerings, and is likely to continue unabated,” regulators concluded.

Thousands of actors, directors, writers and other industry professionals have voiced “unequivocal opposition” to the Paramount deal, arguing that further consolidation will lead to job losses and fewer choices for filmmakers and moviegoers. Many lawmakers have similarly sounded the alarm.

Ellison, chief executive of Paramount Skydance, has pledged to keep Paramount and Warner Bros. as standalone movie studio operations, and vowed to release a combined 30 movies a year in theaters. Paramount has acknowledged the merger will also lead to significant cuts due to duplication.

While the Trump administration’s Justice Department has now confirmed it won’t be challenging Paramount’s $81 billion purchase of Warner, the mega merger is still being reviewed by other regulators both in the U.S. and abroad.

California Attorney General Rob Bonta has been particularly vocal about the transaction, and he said his state is investigating it.

Beyond the U.S., European regulators are also looking into the deal. The European Commission has listed July 7 as a tentative deadline for its review. And the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority is aiming to make an initial decision about its probe by early August.

Paramount and Warner previously said that they hoped to close their deal sometime in the third quarter of this year. And that clock is ticking. Paramount pledged to give shareholders some compensation if the acquisition doesn’t close by Sept. 30 — in the form of a 25-cent per share “ticking fee” for every quarter past that date. It has also agreed to a regulatory termination fee of $7 billion.

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