The UK’s competition regulator is investigating Alphabet’s investment in AI startup Anthropic after opening public comments earlier this summer. The Competition and Market Authority (CMA) announced they have sufficient information to begin an initial probe into whether Alphabet’s reported $2.3 billion investment in the Claude AI chatbot maker harms competition in UK markets. The investigation will kick off on Friday with a decision expected by December 19 on whether to proceed to a phase 2 investigation. Google clarified that Anthropic is not restricted to its cloud services and is free to use multiple providers. In a similar move, Amazon has invested $4 billion in Anthropic, prompting an investigation by the CMA as well. The CMA declined to investigate Amazon’s investment last month due to specific turnover and supply criteria. The deeper dive into Alphabet’s investment may be related to competition with Google’s Gemini, which produces large language models for business and enterprise customers. Update, October 25, 2024: This story has been updated with a quote from a Google representative.
