The U.K.’s antitrust authority has determined that Amazon’s partnership and equity investment in AI startup Anthropic cannot be scrutinized under current merger regulations due to the deal’s size and scope.
This announcement from the U.K. Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) comes exactly six months after Amazon completed a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, one of several well-funded AI startups. Founded three years ago, Anthropic develops large language models (LLMs) and a chatbot named Claude, comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.
Based in San Francisco, Anthropic operates as a public benefit corporation (PBC) and has raised approximately $10 billion since its launch. In addition to Amazon’s $4 billion, Anthropic has received over $2 billion from Google’s parent company, Alphabet. The CMA has also initiated an early-stage “invitation to comment” on Google’s investment, which is still pending.
The CMA examined whether aspects of Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic might give Amazon “material influence over Anthropic.” This scrutiny reflects a broader trend where critics argue that Big Tech companies are attempting to control startups through a new form of M&A strategy that stops short of full acquisitions, often involving strategic investments or hiring key personnel.
However, the CMA concluded that no “relevant merger situation” was established under the Enterprise Act 2002, meaning it did not reach the stage of assessing whether Amazon had gained “material influence” over Anthropic. This is because Anthropic’s U.K. turnover does not meet the £70 million threshold required for investigation, and the companies do not collectively control 25% or more of the relevant market.
“Anthropic is an independent company, and our strategic partnerships and investor relationships do not compromise our corporate governance independence or our ability to collaborate with others,” an Anthropic spokesperson stated in a statement to TechCrunch.
The CMA’s probe is one of many recent investigations. It recently cleared Microsoft’s Inflection acqui-hire, though it determined the transaction was effectively a merger. Microsoft also avoided antitrust scrutiny over its stake in Mistral AI. Separately, the CMA is investigating Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, having initiated a formal “invitation to comment” last year, though there have been no updates since.
