IBM wants to buy HashiCorp for $6.4 billion, but the US government is not simply agreeing. The responsible authority is launching an antitrust investigation.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is launching an antitrust investigation into IBM’s planned acquisition of HashiCorp. IBM wants to pay $6.4 billion for the company, which specializes in open source software for managing cloud environments. Terraform, which automates operational aspects of cloud management, is HashiCorp’s flagship solution.

IBM announced its takeover plans at the end of April. The FTC now wants to examine whether the takeover will lead to the creation of a monopoly. Both IBM and HashiCorp must share information with the FTC.

The investigation is not surprising given the size of the deal. The FTC also intervened (as did the European Commission) in Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. That investigation ultimately led to approval, despite the strong position of power that Broadcom acquired and, according to customers and stakeholders, is also keen to exploit.

overlap

The planned acquisition of HashiCorp would add products to IBM’s portfolio that overlap with solutions from Red Hat, which is already part of IBM. Although the operational differences between Ansible and Terraform, for example, are large and different languages ​​are used, they nevertheless have a similar design.

The intention remains to complete the takeover. In principle, this can be achieved this year.