The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is mulling an investigation into Google parent company Alphabet’s previously announced partnership with Anthropic.
Based in the US, Anthropic is an artificial intelligence (AI) safety and research company, which is considered to be a rival of ChatGPT developer OpenAI.
The British competition watchdog said that it is considering whether the collaboration between the tech companies created a relevant merger situation under the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002.
Moreover, the regulator will investigate if the partnership would lead to a significant reduction in competition within any market or markets in the UK for services or goods.
For helping with its assessment, the CMA is seeking comments on the alliance from interested parties prior to starting the formal Phase 1 investigation. The last date for filing the comments is 13 August 2024.
A Google spokesperson has been quoted by Reuters as saying: “Google is committed to building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem in the world. Anthropic is free to use multiple cloud providers and does, and we don’t demand exclusive tech rights.”
In October last year, reports surfaced that Google agreed to invest up to $2bn in Anthropic. The search engine company was said to have made an initial investment of $500m in Anthropic and committed to contribute an additional $1.5bn in the future.
Earlier that year, the AI safety and research company joined forces with Google Cloud to develop AI computing systems. Google Cloud was also selected by the AI company as its preferred cloud provider.
The partnership aimed at enabling the co-development of AI computing systems. Anthropic has been utilising Google Cloud’s graphics processing unit (GPU) and tensor processing unit (TPU) clusters for training, scaling, and deploying its AI technologies.
The UK CMA’s latest scrutiny adds to a series of investigations into AI partnerships, including Microsoft’s collaborations with startups like OpenAI, Inflection AI, and Mistral AI.
Earlier this month, the British antitrust regulator announced plans to investigate the merger between Microsoft and Inflection AI.
This came after Microsoft’s $650m deal in March 2024, which involved licensing Inflection AI’s models through its Azure cloud platform and recruiting several senior Inflection AI staff, including founder Mustafa Suleyman. In May 2024, the British regulator terminated its scrutiny of the Mistral AI and Microsoft partnership.
