What the corporations have to say about the potential “problem” with the Microsoft and Amazon AI partnerships in the UK

The competition authority in Britain is investigating Microsoft and Amazon’s joint ventures with smaller artificial intelligence firms. The public is being invited to provide input on agreements such as Microsoft’s with the French AI company Mistral and Amazon’s with the US startup Anthropic, as well as Microsoft’s hire of Inflection AI personnel, by the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).

The regulator has asked interested parties to provide feedback by May 9 in order to gauge if these agreements might lessen competition in the AI industry. If they do, they may initiate a formal inquiry.

“The first step in the CMA’s information collection procedure are the invitations to comment (ITCs), which are sent out prior to the official start of Phase 1 reviews. The CMA said that an ITC does not automatically give rise to the formal Phase 1 review or confer authority upon it.
Investments made by Amazon and Microsoft in AI startups

Microsoft gave Mistral AI, a French company founded by former workers of Meta and Google’s DeepMind AI lab, 15 million euros ($16 million).
As part of the agreement, Mistral’s massive language models—the brains behind AI chatbots—will be made accessible on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. The digital behemoth will also provide Inflection AI a $650 million license fee in exchange for hiring a portion of the company’s workforce. Mustafa Suleyman, a co-founder of Inflection AI who presently leads the Microsoft AI team, is part of the group.
Amazon has also funded $4 billion in Anthropic, a US AI company that created the Claude chatbot and massive language model. Amazon indicated that it would continue to own a minority share in Anthropic but will not be sitting on the board.
What Amazon and Microsoft have to say
According to a Microsoft representative, the business will assist with the UK inquiry.
“We continue to believe that standard business procedures, like employing skilled workers or contributing a small amount to an AI start-up, foster competition and are distinct from mergers. According to CNBC, a Microsoft representative said, “We will give the UK Competition and Markets Authority the data it needs to finish its investigations as soon as possible.”
According to an Amazon representative, the CMA reviewing such a relationship was “unprecedented.”
An Amazon representative stated, “Our collaboration with Anthropic includes a limited investment, doesn’t give Amazon a board director or observer role, and continues to have Anthropic run its models on multiple cloud providers. This is unlike partnerships between other AI startups and large technology companies.”
Our investment in Anthropic, which just unveiled their top-performing Claude 3 models, is contributing to the generative AI market being more competitive than it has been in the last several years. Additionally, clients are thrilled about the chances this partnership is giving them. The representative said, “We hope the CMA agrees to rapidly address this since we are certain that the facts speak for themselves.