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ARTICLE · 15 MAY 2026

U.S. DOJ Signals Criminal Risk For AI-powered Algorithmic Pricing Tools

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The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has put companies on notice: certain algorithmic pricing activities might be prosecuted as criminal antitrust violations.

United StatesCriminal Law
Todd Stenerson
Todd Stenerson
Noah Brumfield
Noah Brumfield
Brian Hauser
Brian Hauser
Rachel Mossman Zieminski
Rachel Mossman Zieminski
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Andrew Shaeffer
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The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has put companies on notice: certain algorithmic pricing activities might be prosecuted as criminal antitrust violations. With the law as applied to dynamic pricing continuing to evolve, the DOJ Antitrust Division has staked out a position that creates uncertainty around the use of AI tools.

In a speech on May 14, 2026, Daniel Glad, the Antitrust Division’s Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Criminal Enforcement, publicly announced that companies using shared algorithmic pricing tools risk not just civil lawsuits but criminal prosecution. The implications of this change in position are significant. Defendants facing prosecution face potential prison sentences for individual executives and substantial fines for corporations.1 For that reason, the Division has historically reserved criminal prosecution for what is considered a “hard core” violation, such as price-fixing, where the judicial precedent is clear that the challenged conduct

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