U.K. regulators are opening an investigation into Microsoft’s (MSFT) hiring of former Inflection AI employees and related agreements with the artificial intelligence (AI) start-up.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) said Tuesday it is examining how the moves by Microsoft could affect competition in the AI market and whether they effectively created a merger.
Microsoft reportedly paid $650 million to license Inflection’s technology earlier this year, as well as hired senior members of the Inflection team, drawing scrutiny of the agreement amid concerns it could violate antitrust rules for mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
The company announced that it hired Inflection co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and Inflection Chief Scientist Karén Simonyan to join its AI unit in March. Microsoft presented this as a hiring decision to build its AI unit, rather than an acquisition scenario.
The tech giant reported that “several members of the Inflection team have chosen to join Mustafa and Karén at Microsoft,” including “some of the most accomplished AI …