EC: Microsoft's billion-dollar investments in OpenAI do not violate antitrust laws

Microsoft has not violated antitrust laws with its billions in investments in OpenAI, the European Commission has concluded. The EC investigated whether Microsoft had acquired control over OpenAI, but that appears not to be the case.

In recent months, the European Commission investigated whether Microsoft's investments in OpenAI amounted to a disguised takeover. The tech giant invested a total of around 13 billion euros in the ChatGPT maker, gaining a minority stake of 49 percent. Microsoft also received a seat on the board. The EC feared that this would give Microsoft control over the company, without officially taking over OpenAI. The tech giant would thus avoid merger investigations by regulators. The Commission launched an investigation into the investments in January to see whether this was indeed the case.

The EC now concludes 'after a thorough investigation' that Microsoft has no control over OpenAI, says European Commissioner Margrethe Vestager in a speech. So no merger investigation will be opened. The EC does say that it will tighten its supervision of the cooperation between the two companies. For example, the regulator still wants to know whether certain exclusivity clauses between the two companies could have a negative effect on competition.

The British regulator Competition and Markets Authority and the American Federal Trade Commission are still conducting an exploratory investigation into the billion-dollar investments. According to The New York Times, the FTC plans to launch a formal antitrust investigation into this. The American regulator reportedly suspects Microsoft that with its minority stake it can exert a lot of influence on the emerging AI technology of OpenAI.

Vestager states in the same speech that the EC also has questions outstanding with Google and Samsung. The Commission wants more information about the agreement that both parties have concluded, under which Samsung pre-installs Google's AI model Gemini nano on Galaxy S24 devices. The EC wonders whether this deal will make it more difficult for smaller AI developers to reach Samsung users.