Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
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LONDON—E-commerce giant Amazon’The UK’s competition watchdog has officially launched an investigation into a multi-billion dollar investment in US artificial intelligence company Anthropic.
Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority said on Thursday it had begun a “phase one” investigation into Amazon’s investment and partnership with Anthropic to assess whether the deal resulted in relevant merger situations that could harm competition in the UK.
Following an initial review of Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic, the CMA now has “sufficient information” related to the partnership to begin a formal investigation, the regulator said in a notice on its website.
The CMA now has up to 40 working days to decide whether the deal would harm competition and should therefore be scrutinized further in an in-depth “Phase 2” investigation.
Amazon completed a $4 billion investment in Anthropic in March. The deal included an initial $1.25 billion equity stake in September, followed by another $2.75 billion deal earlier this year.
As part of the deal, Amazon will make Anthropic’s powerful large-scale language models available on its Bedrock platform for building generative artificial intelligence applications. Anthropic’s models will also be trained and deployed on Amazon’s own custom AI chips, built by Amazon Web Services’ cloud computing division.
In a statement to CNBC, an Amazon spokesperson said the company was “disappointed” that the CMA was conducting its preliminary Phase 1 merger investigation, adding that its partnership with Anthropic “will not raise any competition concerns and does not serve the purpose of the CMA itself.” review threshold.”
“By investing in Anthropic, Amazon and other companies are helping Anthropic expand choice and competition in this important technology. Amazon does not have a board seat or decision-making power in Anthropic, and Anthropic is free to partner with any other provider (and Do have multiple partners),” a spokesperson said via email.
An Amazon spokesperson added that the company will continue to offer Anthropic’s model to customers through Bedrock.
A spokesperson for Anthropic told CNBC: “We are an independent company. Our strategic partnerships and investor relations do not diminish our corporate governance independence or freedom to work with others.”
“Amazon does not have a seat on Anthropic’s board of directors and does not have any board observer rights,” the Anthropic spokesperson added. “We welcome the opportunity to work with the CMA to provide them with a comprehensive understanding of Amazon’s investment and our commercial collaboration.”
