Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority was considering aspects of the partnership and whether it would give Amazon “significant influence” over Anthropic. Together, the two companies control 70-80% of the UK market share. File photo: John Angelillo/UPI | License photo
Sept. 27 (UPI) — The British government’s business and markets regulator ruled Friday that the merger between AI company Anthropic and Amazon will not breach the Enterprise Act 2002.
The UK Competition and Markets Authority will examine key aspects of the partnership and whether Amazon will have “significant influence” over Anthropic as part of a so-called “quasi-merger” that is part of a new growth trend. I was considering it. In the field of artificial intelligence.
Together, the companies control 70% to 80% of the market share in the UK, and the CMA will determine whether Amazon’s investment in Anthropic would “lead to a significant reduction in competition within the UK market”. It was. products and services. ”
An Anthropic spokesperson told TechCrunch: “As we have made clear, Anthropic is an independent company, and our strategic partnerships and relationships with investors depend on the independence of our corporate governance and our relationships with other companies. “This does not jeopardize the freedom to collaborate.”
San Francisco-based Anthropic is a public benefit corporation that has raised about $10 billion since its founding.
Friday’s announcement by the CMA comes six months and a day after Amazon announced it had completed a $4 billion investment in AI startups.
However, according to CMA officials, there is no “relevant merger situation” between Anthropic and Amazon based on the provisions of the Enterprise Act 2002, which means that Amazon has “significant influence over Anthropic.” This means that we have not yet reached the stage where we can evaluate whether or not we have achieved this goal.
According to the document, the CMA said: “As the partnership does not meet certain criteria, there is no need to draw a conclusion on material impact.”
Anthropic is a three-year-old AI company that develops large-scale language models and a “chatbox” called “Claude,” a virtual tool similar to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Anthropic’s generative AI-based model, called Claude, is capable of complex reasoning and detailed instructions, as well as advanced interactions and creative content generation. And the Amazon partnership combines AI models with AWS cloud technology.
According to the CMA, Amazon is a U.S.-listed multinational company with activities in multiple business sectors.
British regulators announced in April that they were investigating the deal with Amazon Anthropic and seeking comment from all parties involved.
Last September, Amazon announced it would pay $4 billion for a minority stake in Anthropic and support its development on the Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform. Anthropic also counts Google and Alphabet as investors.
Almost two months later, in October, British authorities launched a two-year investigation into Amazon and Microsoft’s British cloud computing operations.
Amazon called it a “strategic collaboration” and indicated that Anthropic plans to use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to build, train, and deploy future AI models.
In November 2023, the CMA announced that it had approved Amazon and Meta’s commitment to resolve unfair practices related to their marketplace platforms.
