The FTC is investigating Microsoft, Amazon and Google’s investments in OpenAI and Anthropic -Gudstory

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has launched an investigation into the investments of big tech companies that provide cloud services to smaller AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.

The FTC sent letters to Alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI, demanding the companies explain how these investments impact the competitive landscape of generic AI. The Commission seeks to “examine corporate partnerships and investments with AI providers to build a better internal understanding of these relationships and their impact on the competitive landscape.”

Google and Amazon have invested in Anthropic, while Microsoft has a close financial relationship with OpenAI.

The FTC wants information about specific investment agreements between the companies and how the partnership affects product releases and inspection rights. It also seeks analysis of how these investments affect market share, competition and sales growth potential in the region; If there is competition for resources to develop AI products; and any information provided by each company to other government entities.

The companies have 45 days to respond to the agency. the verge Reached out to Google, Anthropic and Microsoft for comment. OpenAI and Amazon declined to comment.

AI developers often partner with cloud providers—namely Google, Microsoft, and Amazon—to get affordable access to the expensive GPUs and processors needed to train, run, and fine-tune large language models.

The government is very interested in investigating the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft and has reportedly debated with the Justice Department over who should initiate the investigation.

“History has shown that new technologies can create new markets and healthy competition. As companies race to develop and monetize AI, we must be wary of strategies that take away this opportunity, FTC Chairwoman Lina Khan said in a statement. “Our study will shed light on whether the investments and partnerships adopted by major companies risk distorting innovation and undermining fair competition.”

The FTC was the first government agency to investigate OpenAI. It requested documents from the ChatGPT creator in July and asked for information about the potential harm to consumers from publishing false information.