The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has initiated an investigation into Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002. The CMA is also examining Anthropic’s partnerships with Alphabet and Microsoft’s partnership with Inflection.
In October 2023, Alphabet invested $2bn in Anthropic, a rival of OpenAI, with an additional $4bn in funding from Amazon. The Federal Trade Commission in the US is also scrutinizing Microsoft’s investments in OpenAI, as well as Amazon and Google’s investments in Anthropic.
The CMA has invited third parties to provide their opinions on whether the partnerships between Microsoft and Mistral AI, Amazon and Anthropic, and Microsoft’s interactions with Inflection AI comply with UK merger rules and their potential impact on competition.
The CMA’s recent technical update highlighted concerns about the influence of major tech companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft on the AI sector. These companies, along with others like Meta, Apple, and Nvidia, have formed partnerships with various AI startups, providing access to resources like cloud computing and data sets.
While most partnerships do not involve a majority stake acquisition, the CMA will investigate the implications and debate the extent to which competition regulators should intervene in the rapidly evolving AI sector.