The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has cleared Alphabet’s partnership and investment in the AI startup Anthropic, concluding that the deal does not qualify for further investigation under current merger rules. This follows a formal probe initiated by the CMA into Alphabet’s investments in Anthropic, a three-year-old company that develops large language models (LLMs), and the chatbot Claude, which competes with Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Alphabet had invested a total of $2.3 billion in Anthropic, including an initial $300 million in 2023.
The CMA’s review focused on whether the partnership gave Google material influence over Anthropic, potentially stifling competition. After examining the evidence, the CMA determined that Google did not have significant control over Anthropic, particularly in terms of board-level influence or reliance on Google’s cloud infrastructure. The authority also noted that Anthropic’s UK turnover, which is under $88.5 million, did not meet the threshold for a full investigation. This decision follows similar conclusions made earlier about Amazon’s $4 billion investment in Anthropic. The CMA’s investigation is part of a broader inquiry into strategic investments by tech giants in younger companies, often referred to as "quasi-mergers."
