LONDON — E-commerce giant Amazon’s multibillion-dollar investment in the U.S. artificial intelligence firm Anthropic is formally being investigated by a U.K. competition regulator.
The Competition and Markets Authority said Thursday that it has begun a Phase 1 investigation into Amazon’s investment and partnership with Anthropic to assess whether the deal has resulted in a relevant merger situation that may harm competition in the U.K.
Following initial scrutiny into the Amazon-Anthropic partnership, the CMA now has sufficient information in relation to the tie-up to begin a formal probe, the regulator said in a notice on its website.
The CMA now has up to 40 working days to decide whether the transaction could harm competition and should therefore be scrutinized further in an in-depth Phase 2 investigation.