CADE will investigate recent acquisitions by the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
Brazil’s antitrust watchdog CADE has started four investigations over acquisitions of artificial intelligence startups by Amazon, Microsoft, and Google.
The probe started in recent weeks will analyze Amazon’s purchase of Anthropic, Microsoft’s acquisition of Mistral AI and Inflection AI, and Google’s acquisition of Character AI.
The requests are based on news regarding these deals. If the CADE concludes that the deals were made without observing the mandatory notification to Brazil, the companies could face administrative proceedings and fines. They could also be forced to submit the cases for the antitrust authority’s review.
The deals involving big techs and AI startups have also caught the attention of regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe, which have opened investigations. Regulators believe some acquisitions could be “disguised” as simple investments.
The United Kingdom has opened a formal investigation into the merger of Anthropic with Amazon. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) stated on the 8th that it had sufficient information about the partnership to initiate such a procedure. Amazon has already invested $4 billion in Anthropic. The CMA is expected to decide on October 4 whether to move to the next, in-depth phase of the investigation.
The same agency has begun a similar investigation into Microsoft’s hiring of employees from Inflection AI. Microsoft paid $650 million in March for the hiring of the employees and licensing of technology from the newcomer. Included in the package was Inflection’s CEO, Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of Google’s DeepMind. On September 11, the CMA is expected to announce whether it will also escalate the investigation to another level.
Paris-based Mistral AI has support from Microsoft and Nvidia. In June, the startup secured $600 million in funding led by General Catalyst along with several existing investors in Mistral, such as Lightspeed, Andreessen Horowitz, Bpifrance, and BNP Paribas. Corporate backers include Nvidia, Salesforce, Samsung, and IBM. DTS Global is also an investor.
Microsoft, which invested €15 million in Mistral in February as part of a business partnership to offer the startup’s products through Azure, its cloud computing platform, did not participate in the new funding round.
Earlier this month, Google announced its decision to hire the co-founders of Character.AI, Noam Shazeer and Daniel De Freitas, and license the startup’s celebrity-imitating chatbots. The co-founders and other shareholders are reportedly set to receive $2.5 billion as part of the deal.
When contacted by Valor, Amazon stated that it does not comment on ongoing legal or administrative proceedings but claims to work in collaboration with regulatory bodies as needed. The other companies did not respond.
Source: Valor International
