The UK's antitrust authority has determined that Amazon's partnership and equity investment in AI startup Anthropic cannot be investigated under current merger regulations due to the deal's size and scope. 

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) made this announcement exactly six months after it was revealed that Amazon completed a $4 billion investment in Anthropic, a rapidly funded AI-focused startup. Founded three years ago, Anthropic develops large language models (LLMs) and a chatbot named Claude, which is comparable to OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google’s Bard.

Based in San Francisco, Anthropic operates as a public benefit corporation (PBC) and has raised around $10 billion since its founding. In addition to Amazon's investment, it has received over $2 billion from Google, an Alphabet subsidiary. The CMA has also initiated an “invitation to comment” regarding Google’s investment, which is still pending.

The CMA examined whether aspects of the Amazon-Anthropic partnership could lead to “material influence” by Amazon over Anthropic. This inquiry reflects a broader concern in the AI sector, where critics argue that Big Tech companies are trying to exert control over startups through a new merger and acquisition strategy that stops short of full acquisitions. This approach, termed a “quasi-merger,” may involve hiring startup founders and talent or making strategic investments.

However, the CMA concluded that no “relevant merger situation” was created under the Enterprise Act 2002 provisions, meaning it did not reach a point of assessing Amazon's influence over Anthropic. This decision is primarily because Anthropic’s U.K. turnover does not meet the £70 million threshold for investigation, and the companies do not collectively account for 25% or more of the supply of the relevant goods or services.

An Anthropic spokesperson stated, “As we’ve made clear, Anthropic is an independent company and our strategic partnerships and investor relationships do not diminish our corporate governance independence or our freedom to partner with others,” in a statement to TechCrunch.

This investigation is one of several that the CMA has launched recently. It recently cleared Microsoft’s Inflection acqui-hire while determining that the deal was akin to a merger. Microsoft also avoided antitrust scrutiny regarding its stake in Mistral AI.

Separately, the CMA continues to investigate Microsoft’s relationship with OpenAI, having initiated a formal “invitation to comment” for stakeholders last year, but there have been no updates on that front.