Microsoft has reportedly avoided further investigation by the European Union. Earlier this year, the European Union’s regulatory body, the European Commission, announced that it was conducting informal inquiries into whether Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI could be Considered a merger Due to the close relationship between the two companies.

However, Bloomberg It is reported, through unnamed sources, that the European Commission has decided not to open an official investigation into the two companies. It concluded that OpenAI is not controlled by Microsoft.

Microsoft had already invested billions in OpenAI before that company’s board unexpectedly decided to fire its founder and CEO, Sam Altman, in November 2023. Microsoft quickly announced that it would hire Altman and other members of OpenAI to form a new AI team at that company .

Ultimately, those plans were scrapped when OpenAI’s board resigned and Altman was reinstated at the company just days after his firing. Shortly thereafter, OpenAI gave Microsoft a non-voting role on its new board of directors.

While Microsoft and OpenAI won’t face a merger investigation from the European Union, the partnership between the two companies is being scrutinized by other regulators.

The US Federal Trade Commission announced in January that it is looking into the various investments and partnerships that technology companies are making in the development of artificial intelligence, including that of Microsoft’s investments in OpenAI.

In December 2023, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority announced that it was looking to collect comments from others to find out whether the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI “resulted in a relevant merger situation”. There has been no word on the status of that informal investigation since then.

Meanwhile, Microsoft is trying to expand its AI investment and partnerships beyond OpenAI. It announced earlier this year that it had struck a multi-year deal with France’s Mistral AI, which reportedly included an undisclosed but minor investment in that startup.