The partnerships that Microsoft and Amazon have made with companies based on artificial intelligence are now the subject of a preliminary investigation by the British Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). The regulator announced today that it is accepting comments about these partnerships ahead of a possible formal investigation.
The press release Says the CMA is looking into Microsoft’s partnership with France’s Mistral AI. The two companies announced their collaboration earlier this year, with Microsoft reportedly taking a small, undisclosed financial stake in Mistral.
In addition, the CMA is also looking into “former employment and related arrangements with Inflection AI” Microsoft announced it was launching a new artificial intelligence division in March, hiring Mustafa Suleiman, the co-founder of Inflection AI, to head that division. Another founder of Inflection AI, Karen Simonian, has also joined Microsoft’s AI division as its chief scientist.
The CMA is also looking into Amazon’s partnership with AI firm Anthropic. Amazon recently announced that it is increasing its investment in Anthropic to a total of $4 billion along with a minority stake in the company.
In today’s press release, the CMA stated:
Foundation models have the potential to fundamentally impact the way we all live and work, including products and services across so many sectors in the UK – health, energy, transport, finance and more. So open, fair and effective competition in the underlying model markets is critical to making sure the full benefits of this transformation are realized by people and businesses in the UK, as well as our wider economy, where technology plays a huge role in growth and productivity.
The regulator will respond to comments on these partnerships until May 9. The CMA will then consider whether one or more of these business arrangements are indeed covered by the UK merger rules.
The CMA previously said it was accepting comments and seeking information on Microsoft’s investment and relationship with OpenAI if that partnership falls under UK merger rules. Today’s press release states that the CMA is “currently awaiting the information it has requested from the companies”.