UK regulator looks at Google’s partnership with Anthropic

CMA to consider whether deal with AI startup is a potential merger, which could prompt full investigation

The Competition and Markets Authority has begun a preliminary investigation into a partnership between Google and the AI startup Anthropic, marking the latest in a string of investigations into deals between big tech companies and smallerAI ones.

Google invested $2bn (about 1.56bn) into Anthropic in 2023, shortly after signing a cloud computing agreement with the startup, which develops the Claude LLM and chatbot.