The British Competition Authority, the Competition and Market Authority (CMA), said on Wednesday that Microsoft’s partnership with Openai does not qualify for investigations under the provisions of the UK Act 2002, the law of anti -incompeting practices of the country.
“In general, taking into account all the evidence available (…) CMA does not believe that Microsoft currently controls the Openai trade policy, and instead exercises a high level of material impact on that politics,” CMA wrote in its decision. “In other words, there is no change of control causing a relevant union situation.”
CMA began investigating Microsoft’s partnership in December 2023. Technology giant is a high investor in Openai after pouring nearly $ 14 billion at the beginning of it. Microsoft also packs many of the Openai technologies in a managed offer called the Azure Openai service, and it works closely with OpenAi to develop products like Microsoft Copilot Chatbot and Github Copilot Coding.
CMA was originally concerned that Microsoft gained the material on Openai in 2019, and that this impact increased after Microsoft’s role in providing OpenAi Sam Altman re-name in November 2023.
“CMA was concerned that an increase in Microsoft’s control over Opennai could cause potential concerns of competition if Microsoft was able to limit the access of rivals to the main OpenAi models in markets where access to basic models is likely to be important and where Microsoft already holds strong market positions,” the agency wrote. “CMA was also concerned that partnership could potentially affect competition in the developing market for the supply of accelerated calculation, given the Openai’s potential to act as an important client in this market.”
But, as CMA pointed out in its Wednesday’s decision, the latest developments have been weakened – have not been strengthened – Microsoft’s influence on Openai. In January, Microsoft announced that it had renegotiated elements of its Cloud calculation agreement with Openai, moving to a model where Microsoft has the “first rejection right” for some Openai’s work loads and grants to allow OpenAi to build additional computing capacities, including a US $ 500 billion agreement with Softbank.
