Amazon ‘Disappointed’ In Anthropic AI Partnership Investigation

‘Amazon’s collaboration with Anthropic does not raise any competition concerns or meet the CMA’s own threshold for review,’ says an Amazon spokesperson regarding the investigation by the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority.

A U.K. antitrust watchdog agency said it has “sufficient information” to start an investigation into whether Amazon’s $4 billion investment and partnership with AI startup Anthropic is hurting market competition in the region.

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said Thursday that it will investigate whether Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic has “resulted in the creation” of a merger situation that could harm competition in the U.K.

A spokesperson from Amazon said the company was “disappointed” that the CMA has not ended its probe into the partnership, which initially began in April.

“Amazon’s collaboration with Anthropic does not raise any competition concerns or meet the CMA’s own threshold for review,” said Amazon in an email.

The AWS and Anthropic partnership revolves around the startup using AWS for mission-critical workloads as well as safety research and building new AI foundation models. In March, AWS unveiled a $2.75 billion investment into Anthropic, bringing its total investment dollars to around $4 billion.

Anthropic To CMA: ‘We Are An Independent Company’

In a statement from Anthropic regarding the CMA investigation, the San Francisco-based startup fiercely denied any wrongdoing via its Amazon partnership.

“Amazon does not have a seat on Anthropic’s board, nor does it have any board observer rights,” said Anthropic. “We are an independent company.”

Anthropic added that its investor relationships and partnerships “do not diminish our corporate governance independence or our freedom to partner with others.”

Amazon: Anthropic Needs ‘Access’ To Capital

The surging demand from businesses seeking AI and generative AI solutions led to Amazon investing billions in the startup last year.

“The early days of generative AI have largely seen one successful option available for customers. Anthropic has worked hard to become an emerging viable alternative. But building models is expensive, and companies like Anthropic need access to a substantial amount of capital to train these models,” an Amazon spokesperson said.

By investing in Anthropic, Amazon said its “helping Anthropic expand choice and competition” in the AI market.

The Amazon-Anthropic Investigation Timeline

The CMA first began to review Amazon’s Anthropic partnership by seeking public comments and information from “any interested party” in April. The invitation to comment on the matter closed May 9.

After announcing the formal investigation Thursday, the CMA said it plans to spend weeks reviewing the partnership with the purpose of seeing whether it will harm market competition.

The CMA will make a final decision by Oct. 4 on whether it will move on to a more in-depth Phase 2 investigation.

CMA Starts Similar Google-Anthropic Investigation; Clears HPE-Juniper Deal

Last week, the U.K. watchdog agency unveiled a similar investigation into Google’s investment and partnership with Anthropic as well.

Google and Anthropic formed a partnership last year with Google investing an unknown amount of capital into the startup. Google and Amazon compete in various markets, including AI, GenAI, cloud computing and cloud infrastructure.a

The partnership saw Google’s AI TPU processors being leveraged by Anthropic to power the startup’s large language models (LLMs). Anthropic said that Google Cloud was its preferred cloud provider.

On the Microsoft front, the CMA this year said Microsoft’s partnership with France-based AI startup Mistral AI did not qualify for an investigation.

In addition, the CMA recently cleared HPE’s $14 billion acquisition of networking and AI specialist Juniper Networks.