Again in December 2023, the UK’s Competitors and Markets Authority (CMA) introduced that it was investigating whether or not Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI would possibly end in a considerable lessening of competitors within the UK. At the moment, the CMA has determined that Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI doesn’t qualify for a merger investigation.

In accordance with the CMA’s investigation into the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership, no related merger state of affairs has been created, so it doesn’t have jurisdiction to evaluation the partnership in its present type.

Microsoft is the most important investor in OpenAI, with about $13 billion invested to this point. Nonetheless, Microsoft doesn’t have any voting rights or the best to nominate a director to OpenAI’s board. OpenAI’s for-profit entity is completely underneath the management of the OpenAI nonprofit.

The current developments of the Microsoft-OpenAI partnership additionally influenced the CMA’s determination. Initially, Microsoft was the unique computing supplier for OpenAI’s analysis and growth. However earlier this yr, each firms introduced adjustments to their partnership. The settlement permits OpenAI to construct extra computing capability by itself as a part of the Stargate mission. Nonetheless, Microsoft can have a proper of first refusal (apart from for OpenAI API workloads, which stay unique to Microsoft).

The CMA talked about the next in its report on the choice of its merger inquiry:

“General, bearing in mind all the out there proof, notably in gentle of current developments within the Partnership which scale back OpenAI’s reliance on Microsoft for compute, the CMA doesn’t imagine that Microsoft at present controls OpenAI’s business coverage, and as an alternative exerts a excessive stage of fabric affect over that coverage. In different phrases, there isn’t a change of management giving rise to a related merger state of affairs.”

This determination permits Microsoft and OpenAI to proceed their partnership with out additional regulatory hurdles within the UK.