Premium, Regular, or Collusive? Brazil’s Aprix Case Tests Algorithmic Pricing
Few antitrust investigations find their theory of harm laid out in the target’s sales brochure. Brazil’s investigation of Aprix, a startup that sells pricing software to gas stations, nearly managed the feat. One of the company’s promotional brochures introduced prospective clients to the prisoner’s dilemma, the classic game-theory example in which individually rational choices can leave everyone worse off. It explained how a price war could produce just that result for rival stations, then posed the sales pitch as a question: “Which pricing decision increases the company’s profit with the lowest risk that the whole market ends up earning less? It is to answer this question that our pricing technology exists.”
Aprix’s webinars struck the same theme. They urged clients not to chase sales volume through discounts: “Lowering price almost never pays off. Resist!” A gas station that “attacks the market,” Aprix warned, would invite retaliation until “everyone loses together.”
The brochure and a handful of promotional videos helped prompt Brazil’s leading algorithmic-pricing case. In April 2026, the Tribunal of the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE) approved a settlement (known in Portuguese as a Termo de Compromisso de Cessação (TCC)) with Aprix. The case produced neither a litigated finding of collusion nor a condemnation on the merits. Still, the settlement offers a concrete guide to how CADE may handle future algorithmic-pricing cases. Aprix is not CADE’s only such case, and Brazil’s debate over whether pricing algorithms can facilitate collusion remains far from settled.