The British competition authority, the CMA, announced on Wednesday that it was examining several partnerships between tech giants and generative artificial intelligence (AI) start-ups, in particular between Microsoft and Mistral AI as well as between Amazon and Anthropic.
The French company Mistral AI, one of the two champions of AI in Europe, unveiled in February a partnership with Microsoft and its conversational AI. Amazon, for its part, has invested $4 billion in the American company Anthropic since September.
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The CMA is launching an “invitation for comments”, which runs until May 9, but it is not a formal investigation at this stage, it specifies in a press release. The regulator also says it is interested in Microsoft’s agreements with Inflection AI, in particular for the hiring of former employees of this start-up.
But the CMA has so far “drawn no conclusions as to whether the transactions fall within the UK merger rules or raise competition concerns in the UK”, according to the statement.
AI models “have the potential to fundamentally impact the way we all live and work” and competition in this sector is “essential to ensure UK citizens and businesses reap the full benefits of this transformation,” said Joel Bamford, a CMA official, quoted in the press release.
In December, the CMA had already announced that it was studying the partnership between the American giant Microsoft and the champion of generative AI OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT), in order to assess whether this partnership resembles a merger.
The British competition watchdog is “examining the comments received” in this context and is awaiting additional information from the companies, but has not opened a formal investigation into this merger at this stage either, he also indicated on Wednesday. .
The European Commission, competition watchdog in the EU, has been examining Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI since January and, since February, the partnership between the American giant and Mistral.
In the United States, the American competition authority (FTC) announced in January an investigation into the investments of several billion dollars made by Microsoft, Google and Amazon in the main generative AI start-ups, OpenAI and Anthropic. .
“The CMA must be careful, as a formal investigation into a modest partnership agreement, based on speculative concerns, could be extremely disruptive and deter investment” in the sector, reacted Matthew Sinclair, a UK manager for the lobby tech giants, the CCIA.
“It is unprecedented for the CMA to examine a collaboration of this type,” noted Amazon.
“Unlike other partnerships between artificial intelligence start-ups and large technology companies, our collaboration with Anthropic includes a limited investment, does not give an administrator or observer role” among others, underlined a spokesperson for the American giant.
“By investing in Anthropic (…) we are helping to make the generative AI segment more competitive than in two years,” Amazon said.
Mistral AI for its part judges that “in the context of increased attention from competition authorities on partnerships among technological giants, particularly in the AI sector, the CMA is issuing a routine invitation for comments”.
“Mistral AI intends to fully collaborate with the CMA in this process” and wants to “contribute to a competitive landscape that benefits all stakeholders,” he added.
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