UK watchdog approves Microsoft-OpenAI partnership after merger investigation.

The UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has decided not to investigate Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI. They are satisfied that the deal doesn't break any of the country's rules about company mergers.

The CMA looked at all the information available and decided that Microsoft didn't gain control of OpenAI through the deal. Microsoft was an early investor in OpenAI, but OpenAI now has many other investors, including big companies like Softbank and Nvidia.

OpenAI is the company behind ChatGPT, a very popular AI tool. ChatGPT's success has brought a lot of attention to OpenAI and attracted new investors.

The CMA is paying close attention to deals involving artificial intelligence (AI) because many big tech companies are investing in this area. This is leading to a lot of deals and partnerships, which the CMA is monitoring.

Last year, the CMA approved a different Microsoft deal with Inflection AI. They also approved similar deals between Google and Anthropic, and Amazon and Anthropic, showing their continued monitoring of this growing field.