Trends
Microsoft, Amazon AI corporations face scrutiny from UK CMA
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of the United Kingdom announced on Wednesday that it was inviting interested parties to provide their opinions on the significant AI collaborations between Microsoft and the French AI company Mistral, Amazon and the American startup Anthropic. Corporations…
Headline
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of the United Kingdom announced on Wednesday that it was inviting interested parties to provide their opinions on the significant AI collaborations between Microsoft and the French AI company Mistral, Amazon and the American startup…
Context
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) of the United Kingdom announced on Wednesday that it was inviting interested parties to provide their opinions on the significant AI collaborations between Microsoft and the French AI company Mistral, Amazon and the American startup Anthropic. Microsoft recently invested 15 million euros ($16 million) in Mistral, a company founded by former workers of Google’s DeepMind AI lab and Meta.
Evidence
Pending intelligence enrichment.
Analysis
Under the terms of the agreement, Mistral, which was last estimated by investors to be worth 2 billion euros, would become the second company after OpenAI to host its large language models (LLM) on Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform. Microsoft denied that its acquisition of Mistral and its hiring of Inflection were mergers. “We remain confident that common business practices, such as hiring talent or making a fractional investment in an AI start-up, promote competition and are not the same as a merger,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in a statement. The spokesperson continued, “We will give the UK Competition and Markets Authority the data it requires to finish its investigations as soon as possible.
Key Points
- The U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority is opening invitations to comment for interested third parties to give their views on major partnerships Microsoft and Amazon struck with smaller artificial intelligence firms.
- The CMA is inviting views on Microsoft’s deal with French AI firm Mistral and Amazon’s investment in U.S. startup Anthropic, as well as Microsoft’s hiring of former employees from Inflection AI.
- The CMA’s early scrutiny of Microsoft’s and Amazon’s AI partnerships is another sign of how the British regulator is looking to take a tougher stance on mega U.S. technology companies.
Actions
Pending intelligence enrichment.
