Initiative overview
The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 is the primary legislative vehicle through which the UK government has sought to address concerns about market concentration in AI and digital platform markets. The DMCC Act creates the Digital Markets regime, administered by the CMA's Digital Markets Unit (DMU), which enables the CMA to designate specific large technology companies as having Strategic Market Status in a designated activity. SMS designation triggers a suite of obligations including conduct requirements (preventing self-preferencing, data access barriers and interoperability restrictions), pro-competitive interventions (structural or behavioural remedies), and enhanced merger scrutiny. The CMA has identified foundation model markets — including AI model APIs, AI-integrated search, and cloud infrastructure underpinning AI services — as priority areas for the Digital Markets regime. The CMA published its AI Foundation Models review in 2024, identifying concentration risks among a small number of US hyperscalers and AI labs. The DMCC Act also significantly strengthens consumer protection enforcement and streamlines merger review processes in a manner directly applicable to the wave of AI-related acquisitions and investments. SMS designation processes for the first cohort of technology companies began in 2025. Internationally, the DMCC approach is frequently compared with the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA).
