Warren, Wyden Launch Investigation into Google, Microsoft Partnerships with AI Developers Anthropic, OpenAI

“We are concerned that corporate partnerships within the AI sector discourage competition, circumvent our antitrust laws, and result in fewer choices and higher prices for businesses and consumers using AI tools.”
Text of Letter to Google/Anthropic (PDF)|Text of Letter to Microsoft/OpenAI (PDF)
Washington, D.C. –U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) wrote to cloud service providers Google and Microsoft with concerns that their respective partnerships with AI developers Anthropic and OpenAI may violate antitrust laws, leading to fewer choices and higher prices for businesses and consumers using AI tools.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)warned in a January 2025 reportthat these types of partnerships might pose “risks to competition and consumers, such as ‘. . . locking in the market dominance of large incumbent technology firms.” The FTC and the Department of Justice have also raised concerns about these partnerships,warning that they can actas de facto mergers and allow companies to consolidate talent, information, and resources, while bypassing the traditional scrutiny associated with mergers and acquisitions.
These partnerships can involve minority stakes and significant investment from cloud service providers (CSPs), like Google and Microsoft, giving them access to AI developers’ talent, computing capacity, intellectual property, or business information.
In some cases, CSPshire the top AI talent awayfrom the AI developer and obtain exclusive licensing of the developer’s technology, “effectively swallowing the start-up and its main assets — without becoming the owner of the firm.” An agreement may also give the CSP a high level of control over, and stake in, the AI developer’s business decisions. In the most egregious case, individuals have heldconcurrent board positionswith both the CSP and the AI developer, in a blatant violation of U.S. antitrust law. Partnership agreements can also lock AI developers in with particular CSPs because of the high contractual and technical cost of starting an agreement with a new CSP, limiting innovation in cases where there are better partnerships available.
“Partnerships between CSPs and AI developers, if left unchecked, may accelerate consolidation of the AI sector, ultimately driving up prices and choking off innovation,”wrote the senators.
In order to better understand the potential anticompetitive risks of these agreements, the senators requested the companies provide more information about their partnerships, including on the consolidation of computing resources, talent, and intellectual property, by April 21, 2025.
Senator Warren has long fought to crack down on corporate consolidation that threatens consumers and raises prices, including in the technology sector:
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