The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is looking into Microsoft following a flurry of Inflection AI staff joining its new AI division.
The phase one merger investigation will consider any antitrust wrongdoings into the partnership between the tech giant and the 2022-founded Inflection AI.
The CMA has until 11 September until the case is deemed necessary for a phase two progression, where potential action could take place.
Microsoft quickly positioned itself as one of the leading tech giants to develop its AI division and infrastructure amongst other competitors. The company has closely worked with OpenAI on advanced language models, as well as Inflection AI on building enhanced AI capabilities within Microsoft Azure 2.5.
Inflection AI’s relationship with Microsoft has seen a host of employees transition over to the Bill Gates-founded company. Most notably, former Inflection AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman joined Microsoft’s AI division just two years after beginning his previous position.
This had led to large questions arising over the nature of Microsoft’s partnership with Inflection AI, gaining a stronger foothold in the extremely lucrative AI investment and development industry that the likes of Apple and Meta are competing in.
Elon Musk, a Founder of OpenAI and former Board Member, sued the company last March for its close ties with Microsoft and negligence of its core non-profit principles.
However, despite these antitrust claims, Microsoft Spokesperson Robin Koch told The Verge that the company’s relationship with Inflection AI “should not be treated as a merger”.
He said: “We are confident that the hiring of talent promotes competition and should not be treated as a merger.
“We will provide the UK Competition and Markets Authority with the information it needs to complete its enquiries expeditiously.”
Whilst the Inflection AI partnership is of interest to the CMA’s antitrust case, the UK body decided not to investigate Microsoft’s other partnership with Mistral AI as it did not qualify for grounds for investigation.
Microsoft is not the only company to have landed in hot water in Europe over antitrust violations after Nvidia was charged by French authorities in early July.
Nvidia – one of the largest chip makers for AI and computer graphics – was found to have abused its position in the field after the surge in gen AI and other machine learning models.
