Amazon’s $4 billion AI partnership with Anthropic has cleared a key hurdle in the UK
After launching a probe into Amazon’s £3 billion ($4 billion) investment into artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Anthropic, the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) have said the deal does not require further investigation.
Amazon has made two investments in the AI startup, leading to the UK antitrust regulator starting an investigation in early August this year.
As the turnover of Anthropic in the UK does not exceed £70 million ($91.8 million) or account for more than a 25% share of the market, there is no concern that a merger situation has been created that would meet the guidelines to investigate competition concerns.
“The CMA considered whether certain elements of the Partnership, taken together, may result in Amazon having material influence over Anthropic … However, the CMA did not need to reach a conclusion on material influence,” ” said the CMA statement.
Established three years ago by former OpenAI staff members, Dario and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic works to ensure high levels of safety and reliability in AI models.
“We welcome the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority decision acknowledging its lack of jurisdiction regarding this collaboration. By investing in Anthropic, we are helping to spur entry and competition in generative AI,” said Amazon.
The partnership between tech giant Amazon and Anthropic will see Amazon Web Services be used by Anthropic as its main cloud service provider. In addition, Anthropic will use chips from Amazon to power its AI model development. Amazon currently face an investigation by US authorities about the hiring of executives from an AI start-up.
This is not the first time the CMA has approved of key partnerships between major tech companies, with the French AI start-up Mistral AI partnership with Microsoft being given the go-ahead recently. Anthropic is still waiting for the CMA’s decision on its other partnership with Google.
