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The Competition and Markets Authority launched a preliminary merger investigation last month.
The UK competition watchdog has closed its investigation of Amazon’s $4bn partnership with AI start-up Anthropic.
In early August, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched an inquiry into the deal due to concerns that it may have resulted in a “relevant merger situation” which could impact competition in UK markets.
In a statement released last Friday (27 September), the CMA said that the partnership does not meet its criteria for a merger concern and has closed its investigation.
“The CMA considered whether certain elements of the partnership, taken together, may result in Amazon having material influence over Anthropic,” the statement reads. The CMA found that they did not need to probe further because the partnership did not meet the criteria for material considerations.
Among the material considerations is the fact that Anthropic’s UK turnover does not exceed £70m and “on the basis of available evidence” the partnership does not account for a 25pc or more share of supply of any description of goods or services in the UK.
“We welcome the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority decision acknowledging its lack of jurisdiction regarding this collaboration,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Register. “By investing in Anthropic, we’re helping to spur entry and competition in generative AI.”
While Anthropic clarified that any strategic partnerships or investor relationships do not diminish its “corporate governance independence or freedom to partner with others”, a spokesperson for the company told Reuters.
Last year, Amazon shared plans to invest $4bn into the start-up, which is the creator of ChatGPT competitor Claude. This began with an initial investment of $1.25bn that gave the e-commerce giant a minority stake in the business.
Amazon followed this up in February with a $2.75bn investment, further boosting its minority ownership position. Other tech giants have gained a foothold into Anthropic, such as Google and Salesforce.
As part of the partnership between the two companies, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is Anthropic’s primary cloud provider for certain workloads. Anthropic will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to build, train and deploy its future foundation models. Moreover, the two will work together on improving the chips in the future.
Amazon developers and engineers will also be able to build with Anthropic models via Amazon Bedrock so they can “incorporate generative AI capabilities into their work” as well as enhance existing applications and create new customer experiences across Amazon’s businesses.
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