The UK competition regulator is investigating Alphabet’s investment in AI startup Anthropic. after opening Public comments this summer, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) he said on Thursday that it had “sufficient information” to launch a preliminary investigation into whether Alphabet’s $2.3 billion investment was due. Claude AI chatbot maker Harms competition in UK markets.
The CMA divides merger investigations into two phases: an initial scan to determine whether there is enough evidence to dig deeper, and an optional second phase where the government gathers as much evidence as possible. After the second stage, it ultimately decides on the regulatory outcome.
The inquest will officially begin on Friday. By December 19, the CMA will choose whether to proceed to a Phase 2 review.
Engadget contacted Google and the CMA. We’ll update this story if we hear back.
TechCrunch notes Alphabet is reportedly investing $300 million in Anthropic in early 2023. At the end of that year, it will reportedly back the AI startup with an additional $2 billion. Cases like these can be classified as “quasi-mergers,” where deep-pocketed tech companies take control of nascent startups through strategic investments and the hiring of founders and technical staff.
Amazon has it Invested more in Anthropic: a whopping $4 billion. after initial public comment periodCMA refused to investigate that investment last month. The CMA said Amazon avoided Alphabet’s fate at least in part because of existing rules: Anthropic’s UK turnover did not exceed £70m and the two parties combined did not account for 25 per cent or more of the region’s supply (in this case, AI LLM and chatbots).
Although the CMA didn’t specify, something in Alphabet’s $2.3 billion investment in Anthropic constituted a deeper dive. of course Google’s Gemini It competes with Claude and both companies make great language models provides to small businesses and enterprise customers.
