By Mauro Orru and Ian Walker


U.K. antitrust officials said they were probing whether Alphabet-owned Google's investment in artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic poses a threat to competition, a setback for the search-engine giant after British regulators cleared a similar partnership between Amazon.com and Anthropic.

The Competition and Markets Authority launched an initial review of Google's investment and partnership with Anthropic in July. Officials have now opened a merger inquiry, with a decision due by Dec. 19 on whether or not a more in-depth investigation is warranted.

Tech giants have been splurging on AI startups since OpenAI's release of ChatGPT in late 2022 ushered in a spending bonanza. Google agreed to raise its investment in Anthropic to up to $2 billion late last year as the company sought to strengthen its foothold in the fierce AI race to better compete with rivals like Microsoft, OpenAI and Amazon.

Amazon, for its part, poured $4 billion into Anthropic, which offers an AI assistant known as Claude. The startup, founded by several ex-OpenAI employees, has been locked in a battle with the ChatGPT maker to secure big-ticket investments from companies willing to provide the training resources needed for its large language models.

As those investments gained prominence, regulators started closing in.

The launch of a merger inquiry into Google and Anthropic comes nearly a month after British antitrust enforcers cleared Amazon's bigger investment in the same startup, saying it didn't qualify for an in-depth investigation. The CMA had also cleared Microsoft's hiring of former employees from Inflection AI and its partnership with the startup.

"Google is committed to building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem in the world," a Google spokesman said. Anthropic didn't respond to a request for comment.

Google doesn't have board seats or voting rights at Anthropic, meaning the group has no veto rights over the startup's strategic commercial decisions, according to Google.

The probe marks a setback for U.S. Big Tech as it shows their ties to AI startups are still under the microscope on both sides of the Atlantic after the Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry into generative AI partnerships earlier this year.

That inquiry includes Google owner Alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI. The FTC issued orders to the five companies to provide information on their investments into AI startups.

News Corp, owner of Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.


Write to Mauro Orru at mauro.orru@wsj.com and Ian Walker at ian.walker@wsj.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

10-24-24 1004ET