U.S. regulators to initiate antitrust probes of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

Since its founding, Apple’s investments have mushroomed to an estimated $13 billion. Microsoft employs OpenAI models heavily in its Copilot chatbot and Azure cloud for open-source models from OpenAI. Their significant investments are necessary because AI models require thousands of specialized chips from Nvidia in their creation and training processes, thus necessitating significant expenditure. Meta, which has developed its own model known as Llama, has recently reported spending billions of dollars on Nvidia graphics processing units — one of many businesses helping it boost year-on-year revenue by 250% or more. News of an antitrust investigation comes shortly after current and former OpenAI employees released an open letter last Tuesday raising concerns over AI industry’s rapid advancement without adequate oversight measures, whistleblower protection or protections to speak up about potential misconduct or abuse within AI systems. “Artificial Intelligence companies possess strong financial incentives to avoid effective oversight, and we do not believe bespoke structures of corporate governance are enough to rectify this,” according to employees’ comments on LinkedIn. Furthermore, only weak obligations have been placed upon AI companies regarding sharing some or all of this data with governments; none exist regarding sharing it with civil society groups. We believe they cannot all be trusted to share it freely voluntarily. “The announcement follows on the heels of FTC Chair Lina Khan’s January announcement to conduct an extensive study into AI industry heavyweights such as Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft, Anthropic and OpenAI. She described it at her tech summit AI talk as an investigation of partnerships being formed among AI developers and major cloud service providers.” By employing its authority to conduct what’s known as a 6(b) study — named for Section 6(b) of the FTC Act — regulators can examine AI companies separately from law enforcement investigations while making civil investigative demands.” “AI technology is revolutionizing how FTC staff approach our work across the agency,” Khan stated at that time. “AI does not fall outside the laws, and we’re closely scrutinizing ways companies may use their power to limit competition or trick the public,” CNBC’s Eamon Javers contributed this report.