The CMA's inquiry into Anthropic and Amazon evolved into a Phase 1 investigation

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has recently published a notice indicating it is investigating Amazon's partnership with Anthropic, which includes a $4 billion investment made by Amazon into the startup, and the latter's commitment to use AWS as its primary cloud provider, training and deploying its models on Amazon's proprietary Trainium and Inferentia chips. After gathering information on the partnership during the invitation to comment it opened from April 24 to May 9, the CMA will now determine whether the agreements between both companies have created a merger situation calling for a Phase 2 investigation, and has committed to publish its resolution on the matter by October 4, 2024.

Representatives for Amazon and Anthropic have already gone on record to emphasize that Anthropic is an independent company since none of its strategic partnerships and investor relations have compromised its governance independence or freedom to enter more partnerships. Amazon further explained that given the prohibitive costs associated with large-scale model training and deployment, its investment in Anthropic promotes competition by enabling the startup to continue its mission with the freedom to work with any other providers.

The Phase 1 investigation of this arrangement is part of the CMA's latest flurry of activity, including the announcement it made a week ago concerning its opening an invitation for comments on the relationship between Google and Anthropic and its recent notification that it would begin a formal Phase 1 investigation into the Microsoft-Inflection AI partnership.