The UK's Competition and Markets Authority is investigating whether Alphabet's partnership with artificial intelligence startup Anthropic has reduced competition in the country. The CMA wants to determine if the partnership constitutes a "relevant merger situation" and if it could "substantially lessen competition."  Google invested $500 million upfront and up to $1.5 billion more over time in Anthropic, on top of prior investments that gave it a 10% stake. Anthropic developed the AI chatbot Claude, a rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT.