The UK antitrust regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), has opened a formal investigation into the alliance between Amazon.com, Inc. and the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic PBC.
A “Phase 1” inquiry into Amazon’s investment and cooperation with Anthropic has been launched, according to a statement released by the Competition and Markets Authority on Thursday.
The purpose of the investigation is to determine if the agreement has created a situation where a merger could affect competition in the United Kingdom.
Large language models (LLMs) are the speciality of AI startup Anthropic, well known for its chatbot Claude.
The company has raised an astounding $10 billion since its founding in 2021. Amazon finished investing $4 billion in Anthropic in March.
The regulatory body has established that its inquiry will commence on August 9, 2024, and that a conclusion must be made by October 4, 2024.
“The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) hereby gives notice pursuant to paragraph (b) of the definition of ‘initial period’ in section 34ZA(3) of the Enterprise Act 2002 (the Act) that it has sufficient information in relation to the partnership between Amazon.com, Inc. and Anthropic PBC (the Partnership) to enable it to begin an investigation for the purposes of deciding whether to make a reference for a phase 2 investigation,” the Competition and Markets Authority said.
The CMA now has forty working days to determine whether the transaction warrants closer examination in a comprehensive “Phase 2” probe because it would hurt competition.
We earlier reported that Mike Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram and a former chief technology officer, has been announced by Anthropic, a generative AI startup, as its first chief product officer.
