In this photo illustration, the Alphabet Inc. logo appears on a smartphone screen and the Google logo appears in the background.
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Britain’s competition watchdog said on Tuesday it was investigating whether Google’s parent company alphabetical A partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic reduces competition.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said it was investigating whether the collaboration between the two companies resulted in “relevant merger circumstances” and whether this “could result in a significant lessening of competition in the UK”
The regulator sought input from interested parties before launching a formal investigation.
A spokesperson for Anthropic told CNBC that the company will work with the CMA “to provide them with a complete picture of Google’s investment and our commercial cooperation.”
The spokesman added: “We are an independent company and our strategic partnerships or investor relations do not diminish the independence of our corporate governance or our freedom to work with others.”
Alphabet was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.
Google agreed back in October to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, a move that involved an upfront cash injection of $500 million and an additional $1.5 billion over time. This builds on Google’s previous investment in the company, which reportedly took a roughly 10% stake in the artificial intelligence startup.
Anthropic is the developer of Claude, a rival chatbot to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Amid the global craze for artificial intelligence technology, American giants have been actively investing in companies they believe can lead the field of artificial intelligence.
Anthropic is one of them. Amazon, for example, committed up to $4 billion to Anthropic last year.
However, regulators in the United States and the United Kingdom are increasingly concerned about tech giants’ investments in smaller companies.
The CMA said in April that it was investigating partnerships between: Microsoft Established partnership with French artificial intelligence company Mistral Amazon and Anthropic, as well as former employees hired by Microsoft to work on Inflection AI.
The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is also investigating these similar partnerships.
The British CMA has intensified its scrutiny of large U.S. technology companies in recent years, investigating whether transactions they make will reduce competition in relevant markets. One of the regulator’s most notable battles was initially blocking Microsoft’s $69 billion acquisition of gaming company Activision Blizzard, although the CMA ultimately approved the deal.
– CNBC’s Hayden Field and Ryan Brown contributed to this report.
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