Microsoft & OpenAI: British CMA ends investigation

Microsoft and OpenAI can breathe a sigh of relief: The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has closed its investigation into the partnership between OpenAI and Microsoft. “The CMA has decided that (the partnership) does not fall within the merger provisions of the Enterprise Act 2022,” the authority announced.

The decision itself is currently still being cleared of business secrets and is expected to be published soon. Microsoft has invested many billions of dollars in OpenAI and has exerted considerable influence there since 2019. Microsoft has also admitted this to the CMA (Competition and Markets Authority). “So the question we had to decide was whether there had been a change from significant influence to in fact control in the way Microsoft exercises its rights in the partnership,” explains CMA head of department Joel Bamford in an online posting.

The proceedings, which were opened at the end of 2023, have dragged on for so long, partly because the relationship between Microsoft and OpenAI has changed several times. Most recently, the two companies amended their contracts at the beginning of 2025 so that OpenAI is less dependent on Microsoft for data centers. “Looking at the evidence (including the recent changes), we have found that there has been no change from Microsoft's significant influence to in fact control over OpenAI,” says Bamford. If there is no change, then no change can be assessed for its impact on competition in the UK.

CMA puts on kid gloves

As a result, the proceedings have been discontinued, which pleases Microsoft. Criticism comes from the human rights organization Foxglove, which sees a connection with the replacement of the head of the authority. The British government removed Marcus Bokkerink and replaced him with Doug Gurr, the former UK head of Amazon.com, around six weeks ago.

“The CMA has been brooding over this decision for over a year, and within weeks of installing a former Amazon boss as chairman, they've decided that everything was totally fine all along and there's nothing to see here,” the BBC quotes Foxglove manager Rosa Curling as saying. “That's a bad sign that Big Tech has convinced the Prime Minister to pull the teeth out of our regulator and allow Big Tech to usurp the current generation of the latest tech, as they did with the last (generation).”

Bamford points out that the CMA will be less of a competition watchdog in the future. Decisions will be quicker, more predictable and in fewer cases. According to British law, the CMA has broad powers, which the authority will no longer fully utilize due to a corresponding mandate from the British government: “We have committed ourselves to defining and clarifying our mandate (as far as legally possible) by reformulating our guidelines,” the CMA manager explains. The new guidelines would be published in June, influenced by the investigations of this and other AI partnerships, “to provide improved certainty from now on”.

The reason was Altman's removal and reinstatement

The investigation was prompted by the fact that OpenAI's Board of Directors fired CEO Sam Altman in November 2023, but he was reinstated a few days later under pressure from Microsoft. The fact that Microsoft can de facto decide on the CEO position of a partner is a clear indication of de facto control. For this reason, both the CMA and the Competition Division of the EU Commission opened an investigation into whether the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI is such a partnership or whether it is more of a takeover.

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