US Regulators Investigating Microsoft's Deal with Inflection

TapTechNews June 6 news, according to sources familiar to The Wall Street Journal, US regulatory agencies are investigating an agreement between Microsoft and the artificial intelligence startup Inflection to determine if the agreement is designed to evade regulatory review.

In March this year, Microsoft agreed to pay $650 million (TapTechNews note: currently about 4.712 billion yuan) to Inflection for the license of its artificial intelligence software, after which Microsoft poached most of Inflection's employees. The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is seeking information on how the two sides negotiated the partnership, according to The Wall Street Journal. This unusual deal is similar to an acqui-hire, that is, a large company mainly acquires for the purpose of obtaining the employees of the target company, but there is no actual acquisition. At that time, legal and industry experts pointed out that Microsoft's transaction with Inflection may raise regulatory issues.

This investigation comes at a time when competition in the field of artificial intelligence is becoming increasingly fierce, and artificial intelligence has the potential to change the economic and industrial landscape. The US Department of Justice said it will pay more attention to competition issues in the field of artificial intelligence as tech giants invest billions of dollars in developing services similar to ChatGPT.

Also according to The New York Times, the US Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission have reached an agreement to launch antitrust investigations against Nvidia, OpenAI and Microsoft's dominant positions in the artificial intelligence field.