FTC Requests Amazon to Provide Details on Adept Transaction in AI Field

TapTechNews July 17th news, according to reports from Reuters and Bloomberg, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has requested Amazon to provide more details about the transaction with the startup Adept in the field of enterprise AI applications.

Adept was founded in 2022 by former OpenAI vice president of engineering David Luan and others, and was ranked second on Forbes' 2023 AI 50 list.

Adept announced on June 28 that its former chief executive David Luan and some employees joined Amazon's AGI autonomy team; Amazon also obtained the license to use Adept's agency technology, multimodal model and data set.

In other words, the agreement reached by Amazon with Adept is similar to the transaction that Microsoft had with InflectionAI, and the latter transaction has now encountered investigations by the US FTC and the UK CMA.

Critical voices believe that large technology companies are using means such as shareholding and personnel hiring to'soft merge' smaller AI companies, substantially reducing competition in the AI market without triggering regulatory laws.

The two US media said that the FTC's review of the Amazon-Adept transaction is still in the preliminary stage and may not necessarily lead to a full investigation or enforcement action.

According to TapTechNews' report on the 11th of this month, the FTC officially announced an investigation into the investment partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI.