UK investigation launched into Amazon's £3bn AI startup investment

The UK's competition regulator has launched an inquiry into Amazon's investment of over £3bn into an artificial intelligence (AI) startup as regulators ramp up their scrutiny of mergers involving the fast-growing technology.

The deal, which was announced by Amazon in March, included a $4bn (£3.16bn) investment into Anthropic and a commitment from the AI startup to use Amazon Web Services as its "primary cloud provider" for essential functions, including safety research and the development of future foundation models.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it had "sufficient information" about Amazon's partnership with Anthropic, the company behind the Claude generative AI models, to begin an investigation.

The CMA said in a statement on its website that the watchdog is "considering whether it is or may be the case that Amazon's partnership with Anthropic has resulted in the creation of a relevant merger situation" and, if so, whether that has "resulted, or may be expected to result, in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services."

A tumble for AI boom companies

The launch of the inquiry follows a tumble in share prices for tech giants and companies associated with the AI boom.

Amazon's share price slid in part because its financial results raised concern among some investors that the company had invested heavily in the technology without seeing much of a return.

The CMA last week announced a similar inquiry into Google's partnership with Anthropic, and it is also investigating Microsoft's involvement in Inflection, the AI lab, and OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT.

The preliminary investigation into Amazon's investment in Anthropic is now under way, and the CMA will decide whether to escalate the inquiry for an in-depth review by 4 October.

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Amazon's reply

A spokesperson for Amazon said: "We're disappointed that the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has not ended its probe yet. Amazon's collaboration with Anthropic does not raise any competition concerns or meet the CMA's own threshold for review."

They said Amazon does not hold a board seat or have decision-making power at Anthropic, adding: "Building models is expensive, and companies like Anthropic need access to a substantial amount of capital to train these models.

"By investing in Anthropic, Amazon, along with other companies, is helping Anthropic expand choice and competition in this important technology."

Anthropic did not respond immediately to a request for comment.