Amazon’s $4 billion partnership with AI startup Anthropic gets UK competition clearance

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LONDON (AP) — Britain’s competition watchdog said Friday that it’s clearing Amazon’s partnership with artificial intelligence company Anthropic because the $4 billion deal didn’t qualify for further scrutiny.

The Competition and Markets Authority approval comes after it started looking into the deal, part of wider global scrutiny for the wave of investment from Big Tech companies into leading startups working on generative AI technology.

The watchdog found that San Francisco-based Anthropic’s revenue and its combined market share with Amazon in Britain were not big enough to require an in-depth investigation under the country’s merger rules.

“We welcome the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority decision acknowledging its lack of jurisdiction regarding this collaboration,” Amazon said in a statement. “By investing in Anthropic, we’re helping to spur entry and competition in generative AI.”

Under the deal, Anthropic is using Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider and Amazon’s custom chips to build, train and deploy its AI models.

The British regulator has previously cleared Microsoft’s partnership with French startup Mistral AI as well as its hiring of key staff from another startup, Inflection AI.

The watchdog is still scrutinizing a partnership between Anthropic and Google. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company has focused heavily on increasing the safety and reliability of AI models.

The AI deals are also facing scrutiny across the Atlantic, where the Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether they’re helping tech giants gain an unfair advantage in the booming market for AI services.