(Bloomberg) -- Google’s partnership with US startup Anthropic will get deeper scrutiny from the UK’s antitrust watchdog, adding to the growing number of probes into the wave of big tech investment in artificial intelligence.
The Competition and Markets Authority said Tuesday it was gathering information from market players to determine whether the Alphabet Inc. unit’s tie up qualifies as a merger and harms UK competition.
The action follows findings from the agency that a pattern of large tech firms investing in AI startups could allow them to shape the markets and cause competition concerns. The CMA said it had uncovered an “interconnected web” of partnerships and investments within AI.
Google committed to invest $2 billion into the artificial intelligence startup last year. Prior to the financing, Google also signed a major cloud agreement with Anthropic, according to a person familiar with the details at the time.
The CMA is also looking into Amazon.com Inc’s total $4 billion investment into Anthropic. Additionally, it opened a full-blown probe into Microsoft Corp.’s deal with Inflection AI and is in the midst of looking at Microsoft’s OpenAI investment.
“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,” Google said.
Anthropic was started in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees, and markets itself as a safer and more responsible developer of AI models. The startup released its latest model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, in June and claims it outperforms rivals in areas such as coding and text-based reasoning.
The UK regulator set a deadline of Aug. 13 for market participants to submit their comments. That feedback will inform the CMA’s decision of whether to refer it to a phase one investigation.
“We intend to cooperate with the CMA and provide them with the complete picture about Google’s investment and our commercial collaboration,” Anthropic said. “We are an independent company and none of our strategic partnerships or investor relationships diminish the independence of our corporate governance or our freedom to partner with others.”
--With assistance from Shona Ghosh and Mark Bergen.
(Updates with Google comment in the sixth paragraph)
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