US senators Elizabeth Warren and Ron Wyden have asked Google and Microsoft for information about their deals with Anthropic and OpenAI.
As reported by Reuters, the senators are concerned about the deals' potential impact on competition in the industry.
The senators wrote: "We are concerned that corporate partnerships within the AI sector discourage competition, circumvent our antitrust laws, and result in fewer choices and higher prices for businesses and consumers using AI tools."
They seek to learn how much AI companies have paid to the cloud providers, whether Google and Microsoft have exclusive rights to license AI models, and whether Google and Microsoft have any plans to acquire their AI partners.
DCD has reached out to the relevant companies for comment.
This is by no means the first time that AI partnerships with cloud companies have been scrutinized in the US. In January 2024, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) launched an investigation into AI deals made by the likes of OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Anthropic.
Under that investigation, the agency said that it would "scrutinize corporate partnerships and investments with AI providers to build a better internal understanding of these relationships and their impact on the competitive landscape."
The FTC issued a staff report at the start of this year, prior to President Donald Trump's inauguration. That report found that there was a possibility that one cloud service provider could acquire its AI partner, at least one of the AI providers had given its cloud service provider advance notice of important decisions, and another had an agreement that prevented its partner AI company from releasing new models without also offering it via their cloud platform. Names of companies were not stated.
Over the years, both Google and Amazon have invested significantly in Anthopic.
It is unclear why Amazon has not been targeted by the US senators.
Google pumped $300 million into Anthropic back in 2022, $2 billion in 2023, and another $1 billion this January. Rival Amazon has invested some $8 billion into Anthropic, which made it the company's "primary cloud and training partner." Anthropic plans to use "AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy its future foundation models" alongside Nvidia GPUs.
Meanwhile, OpenAI and Microsoft have a long-standing relationship. The company is a major shareholder of OpenAI and was previously its exclusive cloud provider. While that is no longer the case, Microsoft still has a right of first refusal to serve the AI firm.
Earlier this month, OpenAI raised $40bn in a funding round. While SoftBank contributed the significant proportion of this - $30bn - Microsoft was part of the group of companies that provided the remaining $10 billion. As of December 2024, Microsoft had invested around $13bn into the company, primarily in the form of cloud credits.
