Britain’s competition watchdog has opened an investigation into Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT)’s hiring of former employees of California-based generative artificial intelligence company Inflection AI.
In March, Reuters reported that Microsoft signed a US$650 million (£502 million) licensing deal to gain access to Inflection AI’s generative AI models.
Under the deal, Microsoft had a carte blanche to hire any Inflection AI team members it saw fit, including co-founders Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan, who proceeded to join Microsoft.
Suleyman, a British entrepreneur, also co-founded Google DeepMind.
The CMA in April opened an invitation to comment on the Microsoft-Inflection AI deal, as well as other partnerships inked between Microsoft and Mistral AI, and Amazon and Anthropic.
“Though these partnerships have the potential to bring pro-competitive benefits, the CMA remains vigilant against the possibility that incumbent technology firms could use partnerships and investments to shield themselves from competition,” the regulator said at the time.
The CMA will now proceed with the inquiry into Microsoft’s dealings with Inflection AI to determine whether they have resulted “in a substantial lessening of competition within any market or markets in the United Kingdom for goods or services”.