LONDON (AP) — Britain's competition watchdog said Friday that it's clearing Amazon's partnership with artificial intelligence company Anthropic because the $4 billion deal didn't qualify for further scrutiny.
The Competition and Markets Authority approval comes after it started looking into the deal, part of wider global scrutiny for the wave of investment from Big Tech companies into leading startups working on generative AI technology.
The watchdog found that San Francisco-based Anthropic's revenue and its combined market share with Amazon in Britain were not big enough to require an in-depth investigation under the country's merger rules.
“We welcome the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority decision acknowledging its lack of jurisdiction regarding this collaboration," Amazon said in a statement. "By investing in Anthropic, we’re helping to spur entry and competition in generative AI."
Under the deal, Anthropic is using Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider and Amazon’s custom chips to build, train and deploy its AI models.
The British regulator has previously cleared Microsoft's partnership with French startup Mistral AI as well as its hiring of key staff from another startup, Inflection AI.
The watchdog is still scrutinizing a partnership between Anthropic and Google. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, who previously worked at ChatGPT maker OpenAI. The company has focused heavily on increasing the safety and reliability of AI models.
The AI deals are also facing scrutiny across the Atlantic, where the Federal Trade Commission is looking into whether they're helping tech giants gain an unfair advantage in the booming market for AI services.
FILE - The Amazon logo is seen in Santa Monica, Calif., Sept. 6, 2012. (AP Photo/Reed Saxon, File)
LEGE-CAP FERRET, France (AP) — Firefighters in southwestern France were working to control the last hot spots of a massive wildfire on Friday that has burned an area four times the size of Paris and forced thousands out of their homes.
The blazes that burned 42,000 hectares (about 162 square miles) of pine forest and touristic resort areas in Bordeaux's Gironde region on the Atlantic coast haven't spread for several days.
Government officials said lower temperatures and higher humidity overnight were helping ease pressures on beleaguered fire squads, who turned their attention to forests and undergrowth along dunes of fine sand.
Europe is facing an extremely hot summer, fueling wildfires from the Atlantic coast to the eastern Mediterranean. The United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Greece and Turkey all battled blazes on Thursday.
The wildfire in southwest France initially forced 224,000 people to flee. Authorities have allowed 144,000 evacuees to return this week.
Officials on Friday seemed cautiously optimistic.
“It’s stabilized, but not totally stopped,” the French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez told RTL radio on Friday. Hot spots remain.”
Fire crews remained mobilized.
Nunez also said in a social media post that Ukraine was to dispatch 70 civil security personnel and 10 vehicles in the coming days to help strengthen the deployment.
Firefighters pay respect to their comrades killed during a fight against a forest fire in Merignac three days before, in Lege-Cap-Ferret, southwestern France, Friday, July 31, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva)
FILE - A plane releases fire retardant as it flies over a forest near Blagon, during wildfires in southwestern France, July 29, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva, File)
FILE - A firefighter walks in front of burning trees as a wildfire rages near Marcheprime, outside, Bordeaux, France, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Emma Da Silva, File)
