LONDON (AP) – Britain’s competition watchdog said Thursday it is launching a formal investigation into Google’s partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
The Competition and Markets Authority said it had “sufficient information” to launch an initial investigation after seeking views on whether the deal would harm competition earlier this year.
The CMA has until December 19 to decide whether to approve the deal or widen its investigation.
“Google is committed to building the world’s most open and innovative AI ecosystem,” the company said. “Anthropic can and does use multiple cloud providers at its disposal and does not claim exclusive technology rights.”
San Francisco-based 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. Last year, Google reportedly agreed to make a multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, the company behind the popular chatbot named Claude.
Anthropic said it is cooperating with regulators and will provide “a complete picture of Google’s investments and commercial partnerships.”
“We are an independent company and none of our strategic partnerships or relationships with investors impair our corporate governance independence or freedom to partner with other companies,” the company said in a statement. .
UK regulators are scrutinizing a number of AI deals as investment capital flows into the industry to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom. Last month, it signed a $4 billion deal with Anthropic and Amazon, as well as deals with Microsoft and two other AI startups, Inflection and Mistral.
