The UK competition regulator is investigating Alphabet's investment in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic. After opening public comments this summer, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) saying Thursday has “sufficient information” to begin an initial investigation into whether Alphabet's reported $2.3 billion investment in chatbot maker Claude ai harms competition in UK markets.
The CMA divides its merger investigations into two stages: a preliminary analysis to determine whether there is sufficient evidence to delve further, and an optional second phase in which the government gathers as much evidence as possible. After the second stage, it finally decides on a regulatory outcome.
The investigation will formally begin on Friday. By December 19, the CMA will decide whether to move to a phase 2 investigation.
Engadget approached Google and the CMA. We will update this story if we receive a response.
TechCrunch grades Alphabet reportedly invested $300 million in Anthropic in early 2023. Later that year, it was said to back the ai startup with an additional $2 billion. Situations like this can be classified as a “quasi-merger,” where deep-pocketed tech companies essentially take control of new startups through strategic investments and the hiring of founders and technical workers.
amazon has invested even more in Anthropic: a whopping $4 billion. After an initial public comment period, the CMA refused to investigate that investment last month. The CMA said amazon avoided Alphabet's fate, at least in part, because of its current rules: Anthropic's UK turnover did not exceed £70 million, and the two parties did not combine to account for 25 per cent. or more of the region's supply (in this case). case, LLM of ai and chatbots).
Although the CMA has not specified it, something about Alphabet's $2.3 billion investment in Anthropic constituted a deeper dive. Of course, Google's Gemini competes with Claude, and both companies make great language models that they offer to small businesses and enterprise customers.
