LONDON \u2014\u00a0E-commerce giant\u00a0Amazon\u2019s\u00a0multibillion-dollar investment in the U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is formally being investigated by a U.K. competition regulator.<\/p>\n
The Competition and Markets Authority said Thursday that it has begun a \u201cPhase 1\u201d investigation into Amazon\u2019s investment and partnership with Anthropic to assess whether the deal has resulted in a relevant merger situation that may harm competition in the U.K.<\/p>\n
Following initial scrutiny into the Amazon-Anthropic partnership, the CMA now has \u201csufficient information\u201d in relation to the tie-up to begin a formal probe, the regulator said in a notice on its website.<\/p>\n
The CMA now has up to 40 working days to decide whether the transaction could harm competition and should therefore be scrutinized further in an in-depth \u201cPhase 2\u201d investigation.<\/p>\n
Amazon completed in March a $4 billion investment in Anthropic. The deal consisted of an initial $1.25 billion equity stake in September, followed by a further $2.75 billion transaction finalized earlier this year.<\/p>\n
As part of the deal Amazon will make Anthropic\u2019s powerful large language models available on its Bedrock platform for building generative AI applications. Anthropic\u2019s models will also be trained and deployed on Amazon\u2019s own custom AI chips, which were built by its Amazon Web Services cloud computing division.<\/p>\n
In a statement to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson said the company is \u201cdisappointed\u201d the CMA proceeded with an initial Phase 1 merger probe, adding that its collaboration with Anthropic \u201cdoes not raise any competition concerns or meet the CMA\u2019s own threshold for review.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBy investing in Anthropic, Amazon, along with other companies, is helping Anthropic expand choice and competition in this important technology. Amazon holds no board seat nor decision-making power at Anthropic, and Anthropic is free to work with any other provider (and indeed has multiple partners),\u201d the spokesperson said via email.<\/p>\n
Amazon\u2019s spokesperson added that the company will continue to make Anthropic\u2019s models available to customers via Bedrock.<\/p>\n
An Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC: \u201cWe are an independent company. Our strategic partnerships and investor relationships do not diminish our corporate governance independence or our freedom to partner with others.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAmazon does not have a seat on Anthropic\u2019s board, nor does it have any board observer rights,\u201d the Anthropic spokesperson added. \u201cWe welcome the opportunity to cooperate with the CMA and provide them with a comprehensive understanding of Amazon\u2019s investment and our commercial collaboration.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Amazon-Anthropic pact is not the only deal facing scrutiny from regulators in the U.K.<\/p>\n
The CMA is\u00a0separately scrutinizing\u00a0U.S. software giant\u00a0Microsoft\u2019s multibillion-dollar partnership and investment in AI giant OpenAI.<\/p>\n
However, the watchdog is yet to reveal whether it will begin a Phase 1 investigation into the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership.<\/p>\n
Stateside, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission in January sent orders to tech giants\u00a0Microsoft, Amazon and\u00a0Google, along with AI firms OpenAI and Anthropic, requiring them to share information about their respective recent investments and partnerships.<\/p>\n
Some smaller tech companies have criticized Big Tech firms over their strategy of building stakes in some of the key companies building advanced AI systems to get closer to them.<\/p>\n
In May, Matt Calkins, CEO of enterprise software firm\u00a0Appian, told CNBC that getting as much data as possible and acquiring stakes in fast-growing AI startups won\u2019t necessarily result in success in the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a market for the clever,\u201d Calkins said. \u201cThe fact that you\u2019ve got enough money to buy, or buy a piece of, Anthropic or Mistral or any of that, that\u2019s impressive. But AI may not be a \u2018winner take all\u2019 market.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s going to be different AI algorithms for different purposes, and they are going to be much more or less valuable, depending on whether and how you\u2019ve loaded your own data into it,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
LONDON \u2014\u00a0E-commerce giant\u00a0Amazon\u2019s\u00a0multibillion-dollar investment in the U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is formally being investigated by a U.K. competition regulator. The Competition and Markets Authority said Thursday that it has begun a \u201cPhase 1\u201d investigation into Amazon\u2019s investment and partnership with Anthropic to assess whether the deal has resulted in a relevant merger situation that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":7600,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}