British regulators have announced that they will not be launching a competition investigation into Microsoft's partnership with French artificial intelligence company Mistral. This decision comes after seeking feedback from industry stakeholders regarding the deal last month.
Microsoft's collaboration with Mistral, revealed earlier this year, is seen as a strategic move to reduce the company's dependence on OpenAI for the supply of chatbots and other generative AI products.
The Competion and Markets Authority stated in a recent update that the partnership does not meet the criteria for investigation under U.K. merger regulations. In April, the watchdog had solicited input from interested parties before determining whether a detailed antitrust probe was necessary.
According to Alex Haffner, a competition partner at U.K. law firm Fladgate, the CMA's decision not to investigate the deal indicates that the structure of the partnership does not grant Microsoft significant rights or influence over Mistral.
While the Mistral-Microsoft partnership has been cleared, the CMA is still examining Microsoft's recruitment of key personnel from another startup, Inflection AI. Additionally, the watchdog is reviewing Amazon's $4 billion investment in San Francisco-based Anthropic. No updates have been provided on these ongoing reviews.
Furthermore, the CMA has not issued any updates on its evaluation of Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI since requesting feedback on that particular deal in December.
