When Broadcom closed its roughly $61B acquisition of VMware in November 2023, it promised simplification. What customers and partners got instead was a licensing overhaul so aggressive that European regulators are now asking pointed questions about whether it crosses the line from aggressive business strategy into outright anti-competitive behavior.
The European Commission has been sending information requests to cloud service providers since July 2026, digging into whether Broadcom’s post-acquisition moves have caused competitive harm across Europe’s cloud infrastructure market. The investigation, which traces back to initial market inquiries in April 2024, is now entering a more intensive phase, and Broadcom’s attempts to slow it down have already been rebuffed by the courts.
The numbers that got regulators’ attention
Broadcom’s changes to VMware’s business model after the acquisition were sweeping. The company ended sales of new perpetual licenses, forcing customers onto bundled subscription models. That shift came with price increases that users have reported in the range of 800% to 1,500%.
The partner ecosystem took an equally dramatic hit. Broadcom slashed the number of VMware Cloud Solution Provider partners from over 4,000 globally to just 19 in the United States and 9 in the United Kingdom. Thousands of IT service providers that had built businesses around reselling and supporting VMware products found themselves locked out virtually overnight.
