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On Tuesday, the CMA announced it was now seeking views on whether the Alphabet-Anthropic partnership could reduce competition in the UK (Photo: Reuters)
Britain’s competition authority is closely examining Google parent company Alphabet’s partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic and its impact on competition, the regulator said on Tuesday.
More than 18 months after Microsoft-backed OpenAI sparked an AI boom with the release of ChatGPT, antitrust regulators around the world are growing increasingly concerned about the multiple deals being struck between small industry startups and big tech giants.
The deals under review include Microsoft’s partnerships with startups such as OpenAI, Inflection AI and Mistral AI, as well as Alphabet’s ties to other smaller companies such as Anthropic and Cohere.
Anthropic’s Claude AI models are competing with OpenAI’s GPT series for popularity.
Last week, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) issued a joint statement with its counterparts in the US and the European Union, pledging to work together to preserve fair competition in the AI sector.
Anthropic, co-founded by former OpenAI executives and siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, announced last year that it had secured a $500 million investment from Alphabet, promising an additional $1.5 billion over time. Anthropic also uses Alphabet’s Google Cloud services for its operations.
On Tuesday, the CMA said it was now seeking views on whether the Alphabet-Anthropic partnership could reduce competition in the UK, and set a deadline of August 13 for its invitation to comment.
An Anthropic spokesman said the company would cooperate with the CMA and provide a “full picture” of its partnership with Google. “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,” he said.
The CMA will decide whether to open a formal investigation at the end of this process.
A Google spokesperson said: “Google is committed to building the world’s most open and innovative AI ecosystem.
Anthropic is free to and does use multiple cloud providers, and we do not require exclusive technology rights.
(Only the headline and image of this report may have been reworked by Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
First published: July 31, 2024 | 00:11 IST
