Amazon-Anthropic partnership does not qualify for investigation, UK regulator says

Amazon’s (NASDAQ:AMZN) partnership with generative artificial intelligence startup Anthropic does not qualify for an investigation, the U.K.’s antitrust agency said on Friday.

The Competition and Markets Authority said in a release that the deal did not need an investigation, noting the agreement did not impact “either the UK turnover test or the share of supply test is met.”

“In particular, the CMA found that Anthropic’s UK turnover does not exceed £70 million in the UK, nor do the Parties, on the basis of the available evidence, together account for a 25% or more share of supply of any description of goods or services in the UK,” the agency wrote in its statement.

The CMA had launched an inquiry into the deal in August to see if it merited an investigation.

Amazon shares were fractionally lower in premarket trading.

The CMA is still inquiring into Google’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) partnership with Anthropic, however.

In May, the CMA said that a similar deal between Microsoft (MSFT) and French AI startup Mistral AI did not qualify for investigation.

Amazon announced in March that it would invest an additional $2.75B into Anthropic, maker of the Claude AI chatbot, bringing its total to $4B. The investment gave Amazon a minority stake in Anthropic but without a board seat. Anthropic is the largest outside investment for Amazon, following a $1.3B investment in EV-maker Rivian (RIVN).

Anthropic is in talks to raise funding that would value the company at $40B.

Earlier this month, Anthropic, announced it is launching a version of its generative AI chatbot Claude geared towards large businesses.