The two US antitrust agencies have agreed to divide responsibility for the artificial intelligence industry, giving the green light to the Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into Microsoft Corp.’s relationship with OpenAI, according to people familiar with the matter.
For his part, the Justice Department will investigate whether Nvidia Corp. violated antitrust law and will maintain oversight over Google of Alphabet Inc.according to the people, who asked not to be named when discussing negotiations between institutions.
The agencies reached the agreement in recent days after more than six months of negotiations, the people said. The agreement authorizes each agency to open an antitrust investigation into the company’s conduct, as well as recent agreements related to it.
As part of this, the FTC has opened an investigation into whether Microsoft failed to adequately notify antitrust agencies about its agreement with Inflection AI, according to people. In March, the Redmond-based software giant, Washingtonagreed to pay the startup $650 million for the license to its software. AI and hired much of Inflection’s staff.
He DOJ and the FTC They declined to comment. The representatives of Microsoft and Inflection They did not immediately respond to requests for comment. OpenAI, Google and Nvidia They declined to comment.
He Justice Department and the FTC They jointly enforce U.S. antitrust laws and work together to coordinate which agency will investigate mergers and anticompetitive conduct through a process known internally as clearance. High-impact issues, such as those related to Googlehave previously caused bitter disputes between the agencies.
The New York Times already reported the news.
The European Union also examined the investment of Microsoft in OpenAI, but ultimately decided not to conduct a formal investigation. The competition watchdog United Kingdom has also said it will examine the partnership, but separately decided last month that a partnership agreement Microsoft with the French company Mistral A Artificial IntelligenceI do not meet the requirements for an investigation.
(c) 2024, Bloomberg · Leah Nylen ·
