LONDON — (AP) — Britain’s competition watchdog said Friday it is ending Amazon’s partnership with artificial intelligence company Anthropic because the $4 billion deal is not subject to further scrutiny.
The Competition and Markets Authority’s approval comes after the agency began reviewing the deal as part of wider global oversight of a wave of investment from big tech companies to major start-ups working on generative AI technology.
The watchdog determined that San Francisco-based Anthropic’s combined revenues and market share with Amazon in the UK were not large enough to require further investigation under the country’s merger rules.
Amazon said in a statement: “We welcome the UK Competition and Markets Authority’s decision to recognize its lack of jurisdiction over this partnership. Our investment in Anthropic will help drive entry and competition into generative AI.” Ta.
Under the agreement, Anthropic will use Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider and Amazon’s custom chips to build, train, and deploy AI models.
British regulators have previously approved Microsoft’s partnership with French startup Mistral AI and the hiring of key staff from another startup, Inflection AI.
Watchdogs are still scrutinizing Anthropic’s partnership with Google. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by brothers Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company focuses on making AI models safer and more reliable.
AI trading is also under intense scrutiny on the other side of the Atlantic, with the Federal Trade Commission investigating whether it is helping tech giants gain an unfair advantage in the booming market for AI services.
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