Inflection AI co-founder Mustafa Suleyman joined Microsoft as CEO of Microsoft AI in March, and took “a number of” coworkers with him. Now, the UK’s Competitors and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened an inquiry into whether or not this and Microsoft’s different offers with Inflection ought to be thought of anti-competitive.
The CMA has till Sept. 11, 2024 to resolve whether or not to proceed the investigation.
Why Microsoft hiring from Inflection drew the CMA’s consideration
The inquiry will research “whether or not it’s or could be the case that Microsoft Company’s hiring of sure former staff of Inflection and its entry into related preparations with Inflection has resulted within the creation of a related merger state of affairs,” the CMA wrote on July 16.
If that’s the case, the mixed firm may create a “substantial lessening of competitors inside any market or markets in the UK for items or companies,” the CMA wrote, which might fall beneath the authority’s jurisdiction.
In a press release to the BBC, a Microsoft spokesperson mentioned, “We’re assured that the hiring of expertise promotes competitors and will not be handled as a merger.”
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The CMA continues its investigation into “interconnected internet” of AI corporations
The investigation highlights the sophisticated internet of relationships between AI gamers. Suleyman beforehand labored at Google DeepMind, then co-founded inflection alongside Karén Simonyan. (Simoyan moved to Microsoft AI as chief scientist beneath Suleyman.)
Inflection AI makes a generative AI chatbot known as Pi, which is meant to be a “sort and supportive companion.” It hosts Inflection 2.5, the big language mannequin behind Pi, on Microsoft Azure.
The CMA turned its eye to Inflection AI in April, when Inflection AI was talked about as part of a request to touch upon “AI partnerships and different preparations.” Particularly, the CMA highlighted a number of relationships between large tech corporations and AI startups:
- Microsoft and Mistral AI.
- Amazon and Anthropic.
- Microsoft and Inflection AI.
The CMA has been trying into OpenAI as properly. Shut relationships between gamers within the AI trade “might be exacerbating current positions of market energy by way of the FMs [foundation models] worth chain,” the CMA wrote in April. The AI trade incorporates “an interconnected internet of over 90 partnerships and strategic investments involving the identical companies,” the CMA mentioned in April.
