LONDON (AFP) – Britain’s competition regulator yesterday cleared Amazon’s investment of up to USD4 billion in Anthropic, an American developer of artificial intelligence (AI), following a short probe.
The Competition and Markets Authority had examined the significant investment by the United States (US) e-commerce giant amid concerns among global antitrust watchdogs regarding tie-ups between AI firms and big tech companies.
Anthropic is developing a rival to ChatGPT-style AI chatbot.
The British regulator had probed whether the partnership caused “a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom (UK) for goods or services”. However, it announced yesterday that it did not believe that “a relevant merger situation has been created”.
This was owing to the fact that Anthropic’s UK turnover did not exceed GBP70 million (USD94 million), nor do both parties “together account for a 25-per-cent or more share of supply of any description of goods or services in the UK”.
