"Antitrust" Iron Fist Strikes Again! UK Reviews Amazon's $4 Billion Investment in Anthropic
The Competition and Markets Authority in the UK is investigating the collaboration between Amazon and Anthropic, fearing it may weaken competition in the UK market. An Amazon spokesperson expressed disappointment with the investigation and stated that the collaboration would not raise competition concerns. Amazon had previously reinvested $2.75 billion in Anthropic, bringing the total investment to $4 billion. The deadline for the final decision on whether to proceed to the second stage of the investigation is October 4th
According to the Zhitong Finance and Economics APP, a few days after the UK antitrust agency stated that it is investigating the cooperation between Google (GOOG.US, GOOGL.US) and the artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic, the same agency has launched a similar investigation into Amazon (AMZN.US).
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of the UK stated that it is investigating whether the cooperation between Amazon and Anthropic may significantly weaken competition in the UK market.
CMA mentioned that it has informed Amazon and Anthropic that it has "sufficient information" and has initiated the first phase of the investigation. The deadline for CMA to decide whether to proceed to the second phase of the investigation is October 4th.
A spokesperson for Amazon expressed "disappointment" that the investigation by CMA is not yet concluded.
The spokesperson for Amazon stated: "The cooperation between Amazon and Anthropic does not raise any competition concerns and does not meet the review threshold set by CMA itself." "Building artificial intelligence models is expensive, and companies like Anthropic need substantial funding to train these models. By investing in Anthropic, Amazon and other companies are helping Anthropic expand the choices and competition of this important technology."
In March of this year, Amazon announced a reinvestment of $2.75 billion in the manufacturer of the AI chatbot Claude, Anthropic, bringing its total investment to $4 billion.
This investment gave Amazon a minority stake in Anthropic, but no board seats.
Reportedly, Anthropic is currently valued at $18.4 billion. Tech companies including Google and Salesforce (CRM.US) have also invested in Anthropic