Google’s $2 Billion Anthropic Investment Gets U.K. Antitrust Clearance

U.K. antitrust officials said they wouldn’t open an in-depth investigation into Alphabet GOOGL 1.63%increase; green up pointing triangle-owned Google’s investment in artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic, removing pressure on the search-engine giant to justify the partnership to regulators.

The Competition and Markets Authority launched a merger inquiry in October to establish whether Google’s investment in Anthropic and its partnership with the startup posed a threat to competition in the country. Officials have now concluded the partnership doesn’t qualify for investigation under Britain’s merger provisions.

Partnerships between U.S. tech giants and AI startups have been increasingly under the microscope on both sides of the Atlantic since OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in late 2022 ushered in a spending frenzy.

Google agreed to raise its investment in Anthropic to up to $2 billion late last year, part of the company’s efforts to gain an edge over rivals like Microsoft, OpenAI and Amazon.com in the AI race.

British antitrust officials said they dropped the Google-Anthropic case because they don’t believe Google gained material influence over Anthropic.

Google and Anthropic didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The announcement from the CMA mirrors a similar decision not to open a formal investigation into Amazon’s links with Anthropic. Amazon invested $4 billion in Anthropic, a startup founded by several ex-OpenAI employees that offers an AI assistant known as Claude.

The CMA has cleared several partnerships between large tech companies and AI startups this year, including Microsoft’s hiring of former employees from Inflection AI.

While those decisions offer some breathing space to U.S. tech giants in the U.K., their ties to AI startups are still under scrutiny on the other side of the Atlantic after the Federal Trade Commission launched an inquiry into generative AI partnerships earlier this year.

That probe 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.

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