The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened long awaited invitations to comment on a range of high-profile AI partnerships.

Microsoft’s partnership with Mistral AI, Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic, as well as Microsoft’s hiring of former employees and related arrangements with Inflection with AI, may be subjected to further investigation if concerns are raised about unfair market dominance and merger rules.

The gathering of comments is the first part of the CMA’s information gathering process, and does not indicate that the CMA has any jurisdiction over the mergers, as of yet.

The initiation of the process follows a recent report published by the CMA detailing the three key interlinked risks to open, fair, and effective competition in the markets for AI Foundation Models (FMs), specifically concerns that partnerships involving key players could be exacerbating existing positions of market power through the FMs value chain.

In its report, the CMA identified an interconnected web of over 90 partnerships and strategic investments involving the same firms.

Though these partnerships have the potential to bring pro-competitive benefits, the CMA intends to stay vigilant against the possibility that incumbent technology firms could use partnerships and investments to shield themselves from competition.

If the mergers are deemed to present competition concerns in the UK, then the CMA can open an investigation.

For now, invites for comments will be open until the 9th of May.

“Today we’re inviting comments into the partnerships between Microsoft and Mistral AI, Amazon and Anthropic, and Microsoft’s hiring of former employees and related arrangements with Inflection AI,” Joel Bamford, executive director of mergers at the CMA, said.

“We will assess, objectively and impartially, whether each of these 3 deals fall within UK merger rules and, if they do, whether they have any impact on competition in the UK.

“Foundation Models have the potential to fundamentally impact the way we all live and work, including products and services across so many UK sectors – healthcare, energy, transport, finance and more.

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“So open, fair, and effective competition in Foundation Model markets is critical to making sure the full benefits of this transformation are realised by people and businesses in the UK, as well as our wider economy where technology has a huge role to play in growth and productivity.

“Given the global nature of these markets, competition authorities around the world are actively looking into AI.

“The CMA recently committed to step up the use of its merger control powers as part of its recent Foundation Models update. While we remain open minded, and haven’t drawn any conclusions, our aim is to better understand the complex partnerships and arrangements at play.”

The competition watchdog is also taking feedback on Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, and is waiting on information from each party, but has yet to open a formal investigation.