Microsoft dodges in-depth UK probe into hiring of staff from AI firm Inflection

LONDON — Microsoft's hiring of employees from Inflection AI, the artificial intelligence startup started by DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman, has been cleared by the U.K.'s competition regulator and will not face an in-depth competition investigation in the country.

The Competition and Markets Authority said in a statement Wednesday that the U.S. tech giant's deal to acquire "certain assets" from Inflection does count as a "relevant merger situation" in Britain, but that it ultimately "does not give rise to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition (SLC) as a result of horizontal unilateral effects."

In March, Microsoft announced the hiring of Suleyman from Inflection, along with a number of other key employees at the firm. Suleyman was appointed Microsoft's executive vice president and CEO of Microsoft AI. The newly formed unit of Microsoft focused on its artificial intelligence products, including Copilot, the company's AI assistant, which it integrated into Windows and Microsoft 365

In addition to Suleyman's new role, the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant also selected Karen Simonyan to join Microsoft as its chief scientist, reporting to Suleyman. Both Suleyman and Simonyan were former employees of DeepMind, the Google-owned AI lab.

In July, the CMA referred Microsoft's hiring of Inflection talent for an initial merger investigation, on the grounds that it was assessing the potential that the constituted a merger under U.K. rules and therefore could result in a "substantial lessening of competition" within the AI sector.

However, on Wednesday, the CMA said that, after taking some time to evaluate Microsoft's arrangement with Inflection, it did not find any risk of a substantial lessening of