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Earlier this year, the software giant hired former Inflection and DeepMind scientist Jordan Hoffman to lead its new AI hub in London.
The UK is investigating whether Microsoft hiring former employees of Inflection AI and other deals between the two parties has implications relevant to a merger situation.
According to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), the merger inquiry will assess whether the creation of that situation has led or may lead to a “substantial lessening of competition” in the UK market.
Microsoft, which has been pumping billions into AI development, hired former Inflection and DeepMind scientist Jordan Hoffman to lead a new AI hub in London. Other hires include Inflection co-founder Karén Simonyan.
Mustafa Suleyman, the co-founder and former CEO of Inflection and co-founder of Google DeepMind, was hired by Microsoft to head its overall AI business. He said the London hub will drive advancements in language models, create tools for foundation models and collaborate with AI teams across Microsoft and its partners – including OpenAI.
“There is an enormous pool of AI talent and expertise in the UK, and Microsoft AI plans to make a significant, long-term investment in the region as we begin hiring the best AI scientists and engineers into this new AI hub,” Suleyman wrote, describing Hoffman as an “exceptional” AI scientist and engineer.
Before joining Microsoft, Hoffman worked at Inflection, the AI start-up founded in 2022 that is taking on the likes of OpenAI and Google. He was also Suleyman’s colleague at DeepMind based in London.
The latest CMA merger inquiry comes after a brief period of invitation to comment on the matter between April and May.
During this period, the CMA wanted interested third parties to give their views on whether the partnerships between Microsoft and Mistral AI, Amazon and Anthropic, as well as Microsoft’s hiring of former employees and related arrangements with Inflection AI, fall within UK merger rules and the “impact that these arrangements could have” on competition in the UK.
The deadline for a phase 1 decision following the investigation is 11 September this year.
“Foundation models have the potential to fundamentally impact the way we all live and work, including products and services across so many UK sectors – healthcare, energy, transport, finance and more,” CMA executive director of mergers Joel Bamford said at the time the CMA opened the inquiry for comments.
“So open, fair and effective competition in foundation model markets is critical to making sure the full benefits of this transformation are realised by people and businesses in the UK, as well as our wider economy where technology has a huge role to play in growth and productivity.”
Last November, Microsoft made its largest-ever investment in the UK with a commitment of £2.5bn over the next three years to expand its AI data centre footprint in the country and foster research into the technology.
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