Google’s collaboration with AI enterprise Anthropic faces a UK competition investigation

LONDON — Britain’s competition watchdog said Thursday it’s opening a formal investigation into Google’s collaboration with artificial intelligence enterprise Anthropic.

The Competition and Markets Authority said it has “sufficient information” to launch an initial probe after it sought input earlier this year on whether the deal would stifle competition.

The CMA has until Dec. 19 to decide whether to approve the deal or escalate its investigation.

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

San Francisco-based Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The corporation has concentrated on increasing the safety and reliability of AI models. Google reportedly agreed last year to make a multibillion-dollar resource in Anthropic, which has a popular chatbot named Claude.

Anthropic said it’s cooperating with the regulator and will provide “the complete picture about Google’s resource and our commercial collaboration.”

“We are an independent corporation and none of our strategic partnerships or investor relationships diminish the independence of our corporate governance or our liberty to associate with others,” it said in a statement.

The U.K. regulator has been scrutinizing a raft of AI deals as resource money floods into the industry to capitalize on the artificial intelligence boom. Last month it cleared Anthropic’s $4 billion deal with Amazon and it has also signed off on Microsoft’s deals with two other AI startups, Inflection and Mistral.