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Image Credits:Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg — DeepMind and Inflection AI co-founder Mustafa Suleyman / Getty Images
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Image Credits:Stefan Wermuth/Bloomberg — DeepMind and Inflection AI co-founder Mustafa Suleyman / Getty Images
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Microsoft is facing a full regulative investigation in the U.K. after the tech heavyweight hired thecore team behind Inflection AI , a U.S.-based OpenAI rival in which Microsoft had antecedently invested .
The news come four month after Microsoft CEO Satya Nadellalaunched a new consumer AI divisionspearheaded by the father of Inflection AI , including deep learning scientistKarén Simonyanand Google DeepMind co - founderMustafa Suleyman . At the same time , Nadella affirm that a figure of other Inflection AI membershad joinedMicrosoft ’s Modern AI unit ( Bloombergreported that mostactually join ) , one of whom was Jordan Hoffmann , an AI scientist and engineer who isnow manoeuvre up Microsoft ’s U.K. AI hub in London .
At the heart of the business concern is that gravid tech companiesare adopting a new M&A approachdesigned to circumvent regulative examination around AI , in what some have nickname the “ quasi - fusion , ” which may involve anything from strategic investments to scooping up startup founder and technical gift .
Multi-pronged investigations
Today ’s promulgation does n’t come as a massive surprise , as theCMA revealed in April that it was conductingpreliminary enquiries into a triumvirate of AI partnership . One of those was Microsoft ’s recentinvestment in Mistral AI , a French inauguration ( anddouble unicorn ) work on AI foundation role model . It did n’t take long for the CMA to conclude that the investmentdidn’t qualify for investigationunder current merger regulation , given that Microsoft ’s stake of less than 1 % would n’t give the tech giant any meaningful poke in the next steering of the startup .
The CMA is also currently looking at Amazon’s$4 billion investment in U.S.-based AI company Anthropic , while it is alsoexpected to launch a full probeinto Microsoft’sclose partnership withChatGPT - maker OpenAI , alike to the European Commission in the EU .
With the stage 1 inquiry now under mode , the CMA has until September 11 to strain a decision on whether the hiring is tantamount to a “ merger , ” and if it is , whether it ’s potential to damage competition in the United Kingdom . If the CMA decide that it does , it will then proceed the cause to a more in - depth “ phase angle 2 ” probe which can take around six months .
