UK CMA Starts Investigation into Amazon-Anthropic Partnership

TapTechNews August 9th news, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced on August 8th local time that it has officially launched the first stage investigation into the partnership between Amazon and the AI enterprise Anthropic.

The CMA will complete this stage of the investigation by October 4th, 2024 and announce whether to launch a more extensive and detailed second stage investigation.

The CMA previously expressed concerns in April about the partnerships between tech giants such as Amazon-Anthropic and emerging AI startups, and solicited opinions from third parties on whether these partnerships comply with UK merger regulations.

Amazon has cumulatively provided Anthropic with $4 billion (TapTechNews note: currently about 28.708 billion Chinese yuan) in the form of cash or cloud service token points, and the two sides have also signed a comprehensive cooperation agreement including model hosting and chip improvement.

Anthropic responded to the UK CMA's official launch of the investigation by saying:

We are an independent company, and our strategic partnership and investor relationships will not undermine the independence of our corporate governance or our freedom to cooperate with others.

Amazon has no seat on Anthropic's board of directors and does not have any board observer rights. We intend to cooperate with the CMA to allow them to fully understand Amazon's investment and our business cooperation.