Amazon’s alliance with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has been cleared by Britain’s competition authority, which stated on Friday that the $4 billion deal isn’t subject to additional investigation.
The announcement by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) comes six months to the day after Amazon finalised a $4 billion investment in Anthropic.
The three-year-old company creates large language models (LLMs) and a chatbot called Claude, which is similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Google’s Bard.
However, the CMA stated that a “relevant merger situation” had not been formed under the provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002, implying that it was unable to determine whether Amazon had “material influence” over Anthropic.
This is because Anthropic’s turnover in the United Kingdom does not match the £70 million threshold required for investigation, and the companies do not “account for a 25% or more” share of the supply of the goods or services in question.
The agency determined that Anthropic’s revenue and combined market share in Britain with Amazon were insufficient to warrant a thorough inquiry under the country’s merger guidelines.
According to an Amazon representative, the corporation is happy with the CMA’s judgement, which acknowledges the authority’s limited jurisdiction over the collaboration.
This CMA approval may pave the way for additional research and development within Amazon’s AI programs, without the impediment of a lengthy regulatory assessment.
“We welcome the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority decision acknowledging its lack of jurisdiction regarding this collaboration,” Amazon said in a statement. “By investing in Anthropic, we’re helping to spur entry and competition in generative AI.”
While Amazon’s relationship has cleared legal barriers in the UK, comparable digital ventures are under review, demonstrating a diverse regulatory approach around the world.
For example, the CMA has accepted Microsoft’s relationship with another AI business, Inflection AI.
We earlier reported that Anthropic is purportedly the focus of a copyright infringement case filed in California.
Three writers, Andrea Bartz, Charles Graeber, and Kirk Wallace Johnson, filed the action.
