The European Commission has officially designated OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Reddit, and Roblox as Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) under the Digital Services Act (DSA) because each service has surpassed 45 million monthly active users in the EU. This designation places these companies under the most stringent level of regulatory oversight in Europe, requiring them to perform annual systemic risk assessments and provide higher levels of transparency regarding their algorithms. Anthropic’s Claude, while a direct competitor to ChatGPT, was left out of this designation simply because it has not yet reached the 45-million-user benchmark required for VLOP status.
This regulatory move highlights a growing divide in the AI and tech landscape between established giants and rising challengers. Under the DSA, the newly designated platforms must implement robust content moderation, protect minors, and undergo external audits to prevent the spread of misinformation and illegal content. For platforms like Reddit, which has become a hub for retail crypto discussion, these rules could lead to stricter moderation of investment advice or community-driven market sentiments to comply with EU standards.
For Anthropic, the exclusion is a temporary reprieve that allows the company to continue its European expansion without the immediate burden of high-cost compliance audits and public disclosures required of its larger rivals. However, the EU maintains a dynamic list, and should Claude’s popularity continue to surge among European developers and consumers, it will inevitably face the same designation. This creates a strategic advantage for Anthropic in the short term, as it can allocate more resources toward product development rather than regulatory legal fees.
US-focused crypto and tech investors should monitor how these compliance costs impact the operational margins of ChatGPT and Reddit. There is a possibility that increased regulatory friction in the EU could lead to a fragmented user experience, where certain features are delayed or restricted in Europe compared to the US market. Furthermore, as the EU ramps up its enforcement of the AI Act alongside the DSA, we may see more US-based AI firms carefully managing their European user growth to stay just below these restrictive regulatory thresholds.