(VitalNews.org) – Amazon’s multi-billion dollar investment into artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is now under investigation by a United Kingdom competition regulator.
The Competition and Markets Authorities have launched a Phase One investigation into Amazon’s investment and partnership with the artificial intelligence company. The goal is to see if their deal resulted in a situation that would affect competition in the U.K.
There was controversy over the announcement of the partnership between these two companies. The CMA says they now have “sufficient information” to start an official investigation; they have up to forty days to decide if the transaction could harm the competition in the country and continue with a more in-depth Phase Two investigation.
Amazon and Anthropic’s deal includes a four billion dollar investment from Amazon that had an initial one billion dollar equity stake in the company. It followed with an almost three billion dollar transaction that was finalized earlier this year.
The deal will allow Anthropic’s large language models to be available on their Bedrock platform for building artificial intelligence applications. Anthropic’s models will also be deployed on Amazon’s own AI chips.
An Amazon spokesperson said they were “disappointed” to hear about the investigation, and added that the deal “does not raise any competition concerns or meet the CMA’s own threshold for review.”
“By investing in Anthropic, Amazon, along with other companies, is helping Anthropic expand choice and competition in this important technology. Amazon holds no board seat nor decision-making power at Anthropic, and Anthropic is free to work with any other provider,” the spokesperson said.
An Anthropic spokesperson said, “We are an independent company. Our strategic partnerships and investor relationships do not diminish our corporate governance independence or our freedom to partner with others.”
“Amazon does not have a seat on Anthropic’s board, nor does it have any board observer rights,” the Anthropic spokesperson added.
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