For European technology, media and telecoms investors, regulation is no longer a peripheral compliance issue. It is becoming a structural factor in how business models are valued, how competitive moats are assessed and where capital is allocated. The European Commission’s recent EUR 890 million fine on Google under the Digital Markets Act (“DMA”) is a useful case in point. Regulators found that Google favoured its own services in Search and restricted app developers from directing users towards cheaper alternatives outside Google Play. 

For Google’s parent company, Alphabet, the fine is financially manageable. The more important question is what it signals about the direction of European regulation and how far regulators are prepared to go in reshaping the economics of dominant digital platforms. A senior anti-trust and regulatory adviser noted that the case ran for more than three years and that regulators repeatedly sought a remedy before ultimately imposing a penalty. “The DMA was created to find solutions and ensure that companies comply with the rules; it was not established simply to issue fines,” remarked the adviser. 

That distinction is important because the risk to investors is not simply the prospect of larger penalties. It is the possibility that regulation changes the economics of dominant platforms by constraining distribution advantages, data usage, monetisation models or M&A optionality. Over the coming years, those factors are likely to become increasingly relevant to margin assumptions, terminal growth rates and valuation multiples across European TMT. 

“The DMA was created to find solutions and ensure that companies comply with the rules; it was not established simply to issue fines.”

A senior antitrust and regulatory adviser, Europe

Nor is Google necessarily an isolated case. An industry expert pointed to ongoing scrutiny involving AWS, Microsoft Azure and Apple, with regulators examining whether these companies are using adjacent services in ways that reinforce their positions as gatekeepers. “I would not be surprised if these cases become more high-profile and potentially result in new fines,” the expert cautioned. For investors, that suggests regulatory exposure is broadening across the technology stack rather than remaining confined to search or app stores. 

Yet regulation does not simply destroy value; it can redistribute it. One source argued that the Commission’s objective is “to help smaller players grow and secure a greater share of the market,” adding that “the DMA is here to stay.” If that objective is achieved, the beneficiaries could extend well beyond emerging software companies.

“I would not be surprised if these cases [with the regulators] become more high-profile and potentially result in new fines.”  

Industry expert, Europe

Capital is already moving towards areas that could gain from a more open digital ecosystem. Dealroom’s 2026 European Deep Tech Report shows deep tech accounting for 32 percent of European venture-capital funding in 2025, up from 15 percent in 2015, with USD 20.3 billion invested during the year. More recent Dealroom data indicate that European deep-tech companies raised USD 22.1 billion in the first half of 2026 alone. 

For investors, the opportunity is broader than venture capital. Policies that encourage interoperability, reduce dependence on dominant platforms and strengthen digital sovereignty could support investment in cloud infrastructure, data centres, semiconductors, cybersecurity, sovereign computing and AI capacity. Regulation may therefore shift economic value away from closed ecosystems and towards the infrastructure required to support a more competitive market. Gatekeepers, after all, rarely volunteer to open the gate. 

Artificial intelligence (“AI”) complicates the picture further, increasingly challenging the economics of traditional search. In Q1 2026, visits to major AI-search platforms were equivalent to roughly 11 percent of Google’s global traffic volume. Average monthly users across AI-search platforms rose from 634 million in Q1 2025 to 904 million in Q1 2026, while ChatGPT captured around 61 percent of AI-search traffic and Gemini approximately 25 percent.

Google remains formidable: its search and related advertising businesses generated USD 224.5 billion of Alphabet’s revenue in 2025. However, AI may transition the competitive bottleneck rather than remove it. Foundation models, cloud infrastructure, compute capacity, proprietary data and distribution could themselves become essential platforms. 

That creates Europe’s next regulatory dilemma. Policymakers are attempting to erode yesterday’s entrenched gatekeeper advantages just as AI may be creating tomorrows. The question is no longer whether regulation is simply “good” or “bad” for European TMT, but where it shifts bargaining power, margins and market access, and which companies are best positioned to benefit from that redistribution of value.