The Competition and Markets Authority ended its investigation of Amazon and Anthropic

In August, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced it would launch a Phase 1 investigation in which it would determine whether Amazon's $4 billion investment in Anthropic had created a merger situation, considering the partnership that had stemmed from the investment, in which AWS became Anthropic's non-exclusive compute supplier, Anthropic committed to making its models non-exclusively available through Amazon Bedrock, and most importantly, Amazon acquired consultation and first notification rights.

Consultation rights enable Amazon to advise and ask about Anthropic's most important business decisions, while first notification rights mean that Amazon is entitled to be notified about any change in leadership and control, so it can prepare a counteroffer if it sees fit.

For a potential merger deal to qualify for investigation by the CMA, it has to meet the following three criteria: the two companies must have become indistinguishable; the companies annual turnover in the UK exceeds £70 million or they control more than 25% of the market share for any product or service; and if the transaction has been completed, no more than four months can pass before the opening of the investigation.

The CMA's summary of the investigation indicates that ownership and control do not necessarily translate to voting control, because other indicators stop short from voting control that still enable one company to exert significant influence over another, including material influence. The CMA claims to have considered whether some aspects of the Amazon - Anthropic partnership could result in Amazon holding material influence over Anthropic. However, since Anthropic's annual UK turnover does not exceed £70 million nor controls more than 25% of the market share for its offered services, the partnership falls outside the bounds of a 'relevant merger situation', leading the CMA to close its investigation.