Microsoft and Amazon’s AI partnership draws scrutiny from UK regulators

Britain’s competition watchdog said on Wednesday it was seeking advice on artificial intelligence partnerships between Microsoft and Mistral AI and Amazon and Anthropic.

The Competition and Markets Authority also said it wanted to hear third-party views on Microsoft’s hiring of former Inflection AI employees and related arrangements.

Microsoft last month named DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleiman to head its newly created consumer artificial intelligence unit and hired several employees from its Inflection AI startup.

The regulator said it had not yet reached a conclusion on whether the transactions complied with UK merger rules or raised competition concerns.

Microsoft said it believes “common business practices, such as hiring talent or investing partially in artificial intelligence startups, promote competition as opposed to mergers.”

A spokesman said: “We will provide the UK Competition and Markets Authority with the information they need to quickly complete their investigation.”

Amazon said it was “unprecedented for a CMA to review this type of collaboration”.

A spokesperson said: “Unlike other partnerships between AI startups and large tech companies, our partnership with Anthropic includes a limited investment, does not give Amazon a director or observer role, and continues to give Anthropic a multifaceted role. Multiple cloud providers.”

The CMA is already investigating Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI and sought comment in December.

“The CMA is also considering feedback received earlier this year regarding Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI and is currently awaiting requests for information from companies,” it said on Wednesday.

The company said it identified an “interconnected network” of more than 90 partnerships and strategic investments in a recent report on the underlying model of artificial intelligence that it has begun investigating Mistral AI and Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic.

The US Federal Trade Commission in January ordered OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon and Anthropic to provide information about recent investments and partnerships with generative AI companies and cloud service providers.

The CMA will seek comments until May 9. This is the first part of the information gathering process and occurs before a formal investigation begins.