Microsoft-OpenAI Partnership Raises Antitrust Concerns, FTC Says

  • Federal Trade Commission probed big tech, AI relationships
  • Agency opened inquiry into tech investments last year

The FTC opened the inquiry last year focusing on the billions of dollars of investments by the world’s cloud-services giants into AI startups. 

Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

Microsoft Corp.’s $13 billion investment in OpenAI raises concerns that the tech giant could extend its dominance in cloud computing into the nascent artificial intelligence market, the Federal Trade Commission said in a report released Friday.

The commission said Microsoft’s deal with OpenAI, as well as Amazon.com Inc. and Google’s partnerships with AI company Anthropic, raise the risk that AI developers could be “fully acquired” by the tech giants in the future.