The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has opened a consultation period with interested parties to determine whether the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAIincluding recent developments regarding the governance of ChatGPT creators, resulting relevant merger situations and, if so, the impact on competition in the country.

The CMA will review whether the company has become a Acquisition control, namely whether a party has material influence, de facto control or more than 50% of voting rights over another entity, or there is a change in the nature of control of an entity over another entity.

This consultation period, called the “invitation to comment” (ITC), is the first part of Information gathering by the CMA and was carried out before the opening of a formal phase 1 investigation, said Sorcha O’Carroll, Senior Director of Mergers at the UK regulator.

The CMA has been closely monitoring the impact of strategic partnerships and agreements that could weaken the economy competencenoted that the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI represents a close and diverse relationship between two companies with significant activity in the underlying model (foundation model) and related markets.

In late November, OpenAI announced that Microsoft, the company’s primary shareholder stub technology, will serve as a non-voting observer on the new board of the company that created ChatGPT.

In a statement, the company confirmed the return of Sam Altman as CEO of OpenAI, following a struggle for leadership of the company, which initially resulted in the dismissal of the entrepreneur, as well as Mira Murati as director of technology and Greg Brockman as president.

Likewise with the companies that ratified the composition new company boardconsisting of former Salesforce CEO Bret Taylor, former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, and Adam D’Angelo, co-founder and CEO of Quora, the sole survivor of the previous board.