The UK’s competitions watchdog is investigating the partnership between Google’s parent company Alphabet and artificial intelligence firm Anthropic.
Google invested $2 billion into Anthropic – which has also raised billions of dollars in investment from Amazon – in 2023.
Anthropic, based in San Francisco and London, has created a large language model chatbot named Claude which is seen as a rival to ChatGPT from Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
Now the Competition and Markets Authority is considering whether Alphabet’s partnership with Anthropic has resulted in the creation of a ‘relevant merger situation’.
If so, it will consider whether the creation of that situation may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition.
It is now inviting comments on the transaction from any interested party in advance of a formal investigation.
Agreements already under scrutiny by the CMA include Amazon’s investment into Anthropic – co-founded by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei – Microsoft’s partnerships with OpenAI, Inflection AI and Mistral AI, and Alphabet-Cohere.
Last week the CMA joined the European Commission, US Federal Trade Commission and US Department of Justice in signing a joint statement setting out shared principles to protect competition and consumers amid the rise of AI.
The statement affirms their shared view that AI, particularly powerful foundation models, has the potential to spur innovation and growth, and to bring about transformational positive change for the way we live and work.
The statement also recognises that these technologies may pose some risks to competition and consumers which, if they materialise, will require action before they become entrenched or irreversible harms.
An Anthropic spokesperson 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.”
A Google spokesperson said: “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.”
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