CMA launches merger inquiry into Alphabet and Anthropic partnership

Britain’s competition watchdog has opened a merger inquiry into Alphabet’s partnership with artificial intelligence (AI) safety start-up Anthropic.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which invited comments on the partnership earlier this year, said on Thursday it has “sufficient information” to allow it to begin an investigation.

Alphabet invested $500m (£385m) in Anthropic in 2023, with the promise of an additional $1.5bn (£1.2bn) over time. Anthropic also uses Google Cloud services as part of its operations.

Anthropic is the creator of Claude, a large language model chatbot that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

The regulator must decide whether to progress the partnership to a phase two investigation by 19 December 2024.

Alphabet and Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Google spokesperson previously said: “Google is committed to building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem in the world. Anthropic is free to use multiple cloud providers and does, and we don’t demand exclusive tech rights.”

A spokesperson for Anthropic said it would cooperate with the CMA and provide the “complete picture” about its partnership with Alphabet. 

It added: “We are an independent company and none of our strategic partnerships or investor relationships diminish the independence of our corporate governance or our freedom to partner with others.

“Anthropic’s independence is a core attribute – integral both to our public benefit mission and to serving our customers wherever and however they prefer to access Claude.”

Amazon has also invested a total of $4bn (£3.2bn) into Anthropic.

In April, the CMA launched three investigations into whether Microsoft and Amazon’s partnerships with three different AI startups, including Anthropic.

Last month, the watchdog cleared both Microsoft and Inflection’s partnership and Amazon and Anthropic’s partnership, saying they do not qualify for further investigation over competition concerns.