Daniela Braga, founder and CEO of DefinedCrowd, a data platform for artificial intelligence (AI), has a beef with Amazon, The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported.
Four years ago, the eCommerce giant’s venture capital fund invested in the Seattle-based company and gained access to the technology startup’s finances and other confidential information.
Earlier this year, Amazon launched A2I, an AI product that Braga told the newspaper mirrors the DefinedCrowd product. She said Amazon Web Services’ offering competes “with one of our bread-and-butter foundational products” that collects and labels data.
After seeing the announcement of A2I’s debut, Braga limited Amazon’s access to her company’s data and diluted its stake by 90% by raising more capital, The WSJ reported.
Braga is not the only executive who claims Amazon appeared to use the investment in their company to develop competing products.
In 2010, Amazon invested in LivingSocial, the daily deals website, gaining a 30% stake, the WSJ reported. Former LivingSocial executives said Amazon began requesting data.
Not long after, LivingSocial executives began hearing from clients that Amazon was offering them better terms.
“They are using market forces in a really Machiavellian way,” Jeremy Levine, a partner at San Francisco-based venture-capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners, told the newspaper. “It’s like they are not in any way, shape or form the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. They are a wolf in wolf’s clothing.”
Amazon denied it uses confidential information companies share to construct competing products.
“Unfortunately, there will always be self-interested parties who complain rather than build,” Drew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman, told the WSJ. “Any legitimate disputes about intellectual property ownership are rightly resolved in the courts.”
In April, PYMNTS reported former Amazon employees said the company violated its own policies when workers took data from its independent sellers to launch competing products.
While Amazon has said it places restrictions on staff from accessing the data of its millions of sellers, more than 20 former employees said they accessed sellers’ information to determine which products they should make under its private labels.
Last year, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) commenced an investigation into Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Alphabet’s Google, and Microsoft over antitrust implications, and in February asked the companies to produce information regarding takeovers of smaller companies between the years of 2010 and 2019.
Full Content: PYMNTS
Want more news? Subscribe to CPI’s free daily newsletter for more headlines and updates on antitrust developments around the world.
Featured News
Walmex Awaits Antitrust Ruling as Mexican Regulator Probes Alleged Practices
Oct 8, 2024 by
CPI
Crypto.com Sues SEC, Alleging Regulatory Overreach in Crypto Industry
Oct 8, 2024 by
CPI
Elite US Universities Face New Antitrust Suit Over Financial Aid Practices
Oct 8, 2024 by
CPI
Kirkland & Ellis Strengthens Antitrust Practice with New Partner from FTC
Oct 8, 2024 by
CPI
TikTok Hit with Lawsuits from 13 US States and DC
Oct 8, 2024 by
CPI
Antitrust Mix by CPI
Antitrust Chronicle® – Refusal to Deal
Sep 27, 2024 by
CPI
Antitrust’s Refusal-to-Deal Doctrine: The Emperor Has No Clothes
Sep 27, 2024 by
Erik Hovenkamp
Why All Antitrust Claims are Refusal to Deal Claims and What that Means for Policy
Sep 27, 2024 by
Ramsi Woodcock
The Aspen Misadventure
Sep 27, 2024 by
Roger Blair & Holly P. Stidham
Refusal to Deal in Antitrust Law: Evolving Jurisprudence and Business Justifications in the Align Technology Case
Sep 27, 2024 by
Timothy Hsieh