Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft Face FTC Inquiry on AI Partners (4)

Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. received inquiries from the US Federal Trade Commission on their investments and partnerships with artificial intelligence startups Anthropic and OpenAI, part of a study on how AI is impacting competition in the technology industry.

The antitrust and consumer protection agency on Thursday said it sent subpoenas to the companies to gather information. The probe focuses on more than $19 billion in investments by Microsoft, Amazon and Alphabet’s Google, a series of transactions that cemented alliances between the world’s cloud-services giants and the leading developers of artificial intelligence software.

Antitrust enforcers across ...