The UK competition watchdog is now examining the collaboration between tech giants Microsoft and Amazon as well as smaller AI companies. The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a public consultation process on these partnerships. They are particularly interested in Microsoft’s deal with French AI firm Mistral and Amazon’s plans with the US startup Anthropic , with Microsoft’s main focus on hiring Inflection AI professionals consisting of analyzing whether these contracts can stifle competition in the AI market. Interested parties are invited to submit their proposals by May 9, which will inform possible formal research.
The CMA is closely monitoring the impact of Microsoft and Amazon’s investments in AI. Microsoft recently invested 15 million euros ($16 million) in Mistral AI, which was founded by former Meta and Google DeepMind AI lab employees As part of the deal, Mistral will use its largest language model – the technology behind AI chatbots available on Microsoft’s Azure claude platform. In addition, Microsoft is licensing AI software from Inflection AI for $650 million and hiring some of its employees, including co-founder Mustafa Suleiman, who now heads Microsoft’s AI team.
Meanwhile, Amazon’s massive $4 billion investment in Anthropic, a U.S.-based company. An AI company known for its claude-big-language model as well as chatbots. Amazon will retain a minority stake in Anthropic without holding a board seat.
Responding to the investigation,
We remain confident that common business practices such as the hiring of talent or making a fractional investment in an AI start-up promote competition and are not the same as a merger. We will provide the UK Competition and Markets Authority with the information it needs to complete its inquiries expeditiously,” a Microsoft spokesperson said, as per CNBC
On the other hand, “Unlike partnerships between other AI startups and large technology companies, our collaboration with Anthropic includes a limited investment, doesn’t give Amazon a board director or observer role, and continues to have Anthropic running its models on multiple cloud providers,” Amazon’s spokesperson said.
“By investing in Anthropic, which has just released its industry-best, new Claude 3 models, we’re helping make the generative AI segment more competitive than it’s been the last couple years. And, customers are very excited about the opportunities this collaboration is providing them. We’re confident that the facts speak for themselves, and hope the CMA agrees to resolve this quickly,” the spokesperson added. Both companies believe their collaboration benefits customers and increases competition in the AI market. Their objective is to resolve inquiries from the CMA expeditiously based on the practical facts of their transaction.