UK's Antitrust Regulator Clears Microsoft, Inflection AI Partnership

(RTTNews) - The U.K.'s competition regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority or CMA, has cleared Microsoft's (MSFT) deal with the developer of chatbot Pi, Inflection AI, which included a licensing deal and the hiring of former Inflection employees.

The CMA permitted the deal, potentially valued at about $650 million, to move forward, stating that it does not qualify as a "relevant merger situation" under its regulatory scope, and does not raise any concerns about a "substantial lessening of competition."

Joel Bamford, executive director of mergers at the CMA, posted on LinkedIn, "Inflection AI is not a strong competitor to the consumer chatbots that Microsoft has developed directly (Copilot) and in partnership with OpenAI (ChatGPT). On this basis, we cleared the transaction."

In March, the tech giant had announced hiring of Inflection AI's key personnel, including co-founders Mustafa Suleyman and Karen Simonyan, as well as a licensing deal for the AI company's intellectual property.

The transaction had drawn the attention of the antitrust regulator to ensure that it does not pose any substantial competition concerns within the artificial intelligence market.

Currently, Microsoft's stock is trading at $407.83, down 0.39 percent on the Nasdaq.