UK Investigates Alphabet-Anthropic partnership
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The news: Britain's antitrust regulator is formally investigating Alphabet's partnership with AI startup Anthropic, and what impact it has on competition in the UK, it said Tuesday.
The numbers: Alphabet last year agreed to invest up to USD2 billion in Anthropic, the maker of AI-powered chatbot Claude, which competes with Google’s Gemini. The firm was founded by ex-OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is seeking public input during phase one of its review from 30 July to 13 August. A decision on a formal investigation will follow.
The context: The scrutiny comes amid heightened regulatory focus on partnerships between tech giants and smaller AI startups.
Antitrust regulators around the world are also reviewing Microsoft's partnerships with OpenAI, Inflection AI and Mistral AI, as well as Alphabet's connections with Cohere.
