Civil Society Groups Urge UK to Investigate Microsoft's Monopolistic Partnership with OpenAI

BRUSSLES — A coalition of civil society groups including Open Markets, the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, Mozilla, Foxglove and more wrote to the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) calling for a full investigation into Microsoft's $13 billion monopolistic partnership with OpenAI.

“As we've seen in the past, tech giants use strategic investments and acquisitions to entrench their hold over key digital markets, eliminating potential rivals and monopolising access to innovative new technologies. The Microsoft/OpenAI partnership should be seen in the same light,” said Open Markets Europe Director Max von Thun.

The submission outlines the partnership's anti-competitive implications, including Microsoft's considerable influence over OpenAI's decision-making and privileged access to the startup's technology, and OpenAI's dependence on Microsoft's computing infrastructure.

We argue that recent firing and rehiring of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman made this influence clearer than ever, given Microsoft's role in pressuring the board to back down, and subsequently offering jobs to Altman and the entire OpenAI team when this failed.

Our submission also identifies a set of concrete issues and questions for the CMA to investigate, including the extent to which OpenAI is allowed by Microsoft to compete independently, and the degree of exclusive access to OpenAI's technology that Microsoft enjoys.

Read the submission below or download here.