FTC, DOJ Urged to Investigate Big Tech Companies’ AI Consolidation

Three Democratic senators have asked the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice to launch an investigation into the big tech companies for their artificial intelligence consolidation activities, which involve hiring talents and getting access to products from AI startups without formally acquiring them.

In a letter to the FTC and the DOJ, Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., Peter Welch, D-Vt., and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., highlighted Amazon and Adept’s deal that would transfer 66 percent of the latter’s employees, including its CEO, to Amazon and provide the tech company a license to Adept’s AI models and datasets.

Such an agreement enables Amazon to avoid any potential oversight from the FTC and the DOJ, Wyden’s Senate office said.

The letter states that the deal reflects anticompetitive behavior, noting that Adept was a competitor to Anthropic, where Amazon invested $4 billion.

Microsoft has a similar agreement with Inflection, under which 70 percent of the latter’s employees moved to Microsoft.

According to the senators, the deal eliminated Inflection as a competitor to OpenAI, in which Microsoft invested over $13 billion.