Britain's competition regulator on Tuesday said it is investigating to see if Google parent partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has resulted in reduced competition.
The Competition and Markets Authority said that it is looking into whether a partnership between the two firms has led to a "relevant merger situation," and if that "may be expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition" in the U.K.
The regulator has invited comments from interested parties before beginning a formal investigation.
An Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC that the company will cooperate with the CMA and "provide them with the complete picture about Google's investment and our commercial collaboration."
"We are an independent company and none of our strategic partnerships or investor relationships diminish the independence of our corporate governance or our freedom to partner with others," the spokesperson added.
The Anthropic spokesperson added that, unlike OpenAI, which previously gave Microsoft an observer seat on its board, neither Google nor Amazon has a seat or any observation rights over Anthropic's board. Microsoft recently dropped its seat as an observer on the board of the company.
Anthropic added that its models are available non-exclusively on Google's Vertex AI platform, as well as Amazon's Bedrock, alongside models from other AI labs.
Google also pushed back on competition concerns over its deal with Anthropic.
A spokesperson for the company told CNBC that it's "committed to building the most open and innovative AI ecosystem in the world," and added that Anthropic is "free to use multiple cloud providers and does, and we don't demand exclusive tech rights."
back in October, in a move that involved a $500 million upfront cash injection and an additional $1.5 billion to be poured in over time. This was on top of prior investments Google had made in the company, which has reportedly given it around a 10% stake in the AI startup.
Anthropic is the , a rival chatbot to OpenAI's ChatGPT.
U.S. giants have been aggressively investing in companies they think can lead in artificial intelligence, amid a global frenzy around the technology.
Anthropic is one of those companies. Amazon, for example, .
However, regulators in the U.S. and U.K. have become increasingly concerned by the investments being made by technology giants in smaller firms.
The CMA in April said it was between and French AI firm Mistral, and into the relationship between and Anthropic, as well as into Microsoft's hiring of former employees from Inflection AI.
Since then, the regulator .
The these similar partnerships.
Britain's CMA has stepped up its scrutiny of big U.S. tech firms in recent years, looking into whether the deals they make will reduce competition in the relevant market. One of the regulator's most noteworthy battles was the initial blocking of Microsoft's $69 billion takeover of gaming firm Activision Blizzard, though the CMA .
— CNBC's Hayden Field and Ryan Browne contributed to this report.
