United Kingdom: Announced launch of CMA investigation into partnership between Amazon and Anthropic (Phase 1 investigation)

On 8 August 2024, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced the launch of a merger inquiry regarding the partnership between Amazon and Anthropic (phase 1 investigation). In particular, the CMA is investigating the partnership between Amazon and Anthropic PBC to advance generative artificial intelligence, with Amazon becoming Anthropic’s main cloud provider for certain workloads, including agreements for purchasing computing capacity and commitments to make Anthropic models available on Amazon Bedrock. The CMA will announce its decision whether to refer the merger for a Phase 2 investigation by 4 October 2024.