FTC opens antitrust probe over Microsoft’s deal with Inflection, WSJ says

The Federal Trade Commission, FTC, is investigating if Microsoft structured one of its deals with an AI startup to avoid a government antitrust review of the transaction, Dave Michaels and Tom Dotan of The Wall Street Journal reports. In March, Microsoft hired Inflection AI’s co-founder, almost all of its employees, and agreed to pay the startup around $650M as part of a licensing fee to resell its technology. The FTC is focusing down on Microsoft’s deal with Inflection, seeking information on how and why they negotiated their partnership, according to a person familiar with the matter and records reviewed by the Journal.