U.K.’s competition authority says Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership doesn’t quality for investigation

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By innovtech24

U.K.’s competition authority says Microsoft’s OpenAI partnership doesn’t quality for investigation

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Written By innovtech24

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Britain’s competition authority, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), said Wednesday that Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI doesn’t qualify for investigation under the merger provisions of the U.K.’s Enterprise Act 2002, the country’s anticompetitive practices law.

“Overall, taking into account all of the available evidence […] the CMA does not believe that Microsoft currently controls OpenAI’s commercial policy, and instead exerts a high level of material influence over that policy,” the CMA wrote in its decision. “In other words there is no change of control giving rise to a relevant merger situation.”

The CMA began investigating Microsoft’s partnership in December 2023. The tech giant is a top investor in OpenAI, having poured nearly $14 billion into the AI startup. Microsoft also packages many of OpenAI’s technologies in a managed offering called the Azure OpenAI Service, and it works closely with OpenAI to develop products like Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot and GitHub Copilot AI coding assistant.

TechCrunch

2025-03-05 12:57:40

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