EU regulators eye potential anti-competitive effects of Microsoft's OpenAI partnership

The EU Commission is looking into a possible antitrust probe into the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI after dropping a merger review. EU Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager said on Friday: "The key question was whether Microsoft had acquired control on a lasting basis over OpenAI. After a thorough review we concluded that such was not the case. So we are closing this chapter, but the story is not over." The European Commission investigated whether Microsoft's multi-billion dollar investment in OpenAI falls under the EU merger control regulation. According to Vestager, the EU is now investigating whether "certain exclusivity clauses" in the contract between Microsoft and OpenAI "could have a negative effect on competitors." The US and UK are also investigating the Microsoft-OpenAI alliance. The Commission has also announced that it will investigate Google's agreement with Samsung to pre-install Gemini on the company's smartphones.