The UK competition watchdog is looking into Amazon’s $4 billion investment in US artificial intelligence startup Anthropic as part of its technology partnerships investigation.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced that they will conduct a preliminary investigation into the deal before deciding whether a full investigation is needed.
The deal, revealed in March, included a $4 billion investment from Amazon in Anthropic, with a commitment for Anthropic to utilize Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider for crucial workloads such as safety research and future model development.
Regulators are assessing whether the Amazon-Anthropic partnership has raised concerns about competition or formed a relevant merger situation.
An Anthropic spokesperson clarified that the company remains independent and that their partnerships with investors do not compromise their independence or ability to collaborate with others.
Amazon also stated that their collaboration with Anthropic does not pose competition issues and does not meet the CMA’s review threshold.
The CMA is also investigating Google’s partnership with Anthropic and Microsoft’s structural partnership with OpenAI, which includes AI labs Inflection and ChatGPT.
Microsoft’s dealings with French AI startup Mistral were previously under investigation by the CMA but the case was dropped in May.
Source: www.theguardian.com
