The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has decided to drop its investigation into Amazon's alliance with Anthropic, saying the significant deciding factor was a lack of local turnover for the AI toolmaker.
The regulator issued a call for views on the matter in April amid concerns that Amazon's $4 billion total investment in Anthropic could be regarded as more of a merger than a sprinkling of cash. At the time, Amazon insisted it was merely investing, Anthropic could run its models on anyone's cloud, and the megacorp wouldn't have a director seat on Anthropic's board.
In August, the CMA took a closer look at the agreement to determine if a deeper inspection was required. The good news for Amazon and Anthropic is that the authorities don't regard it as a merger situation.
In its decision, the CMA didn't reach a conclusion on whether the partnership might result in Amazon having a material influence over Anthropic. There was no need for it to do so. Anthropic's UK turnover didn't exceed £70 million ($93 million) in the UK and Amazon and Anthropic didn't account for more than 25 percent of the UK market share.
The watchdog said: "The CMA does not therefore believe that it is or may be the case that a relevant merger situation has been created."
A spokesperson at Amazon told The Register:
"We welcome the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) decision acknowledging its lack of jurisdiction regarding this collaboration. By investing in Anthropic, we’re helping to spur entry and competition in generative AI."
Earlier this month, the CMA cleared Microsoft's acquihire of Inflection AI on similar grounds – the startup was not big enough to matter. The EU followed suit, although the Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM) argued it needs extra powers in the light of referrals being dropped due to Inflection's relatively low turnover.
While the CMA has decided that a deeper dive into Amazon's links with Anthropic is outside of its jurisdiction, it is still looking at Alphabet's partnership with Anthropic. Google recently invested another $2 billion in the AI biz on top of the half billion it had spent earlier in the year.
The CMA did not comment when asked if the Alphabet investigation might also be dropped under similar grounds to Amazon's. The investigation is, after all, still ongoing. ®