Microsoft's $13 billion investment in OpenAI Inc. has recently been released by the UK's antitrust regulator, the UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA). This decision marks the CMA's determination that the transaction does not meet the conditions for a comprehensive investigation under the merger rules after about 14 months of in-depth review.

Previously, the CMA said it plans to evaluate whether the partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI will lead to a significant increase in the control and influence of the two companies over each other. However, after a thorough and meticulous review, the CMA finally concluded that the deal would not raise antitrust issues.

This decision eliminates an important regulatory uncertainty faced by Microsoft in the UK and clears the obstacles for the further advancement of cooperation between the two sides. However, it is worth noting that Microsoft is still under investigation into its cloud services and will still need to deal with other potential regulatory challenges in the future.

A few weeks ago, the FTC expressed concerns about the deal, believing it could extend Microsoft's dominance in the cloud computing field to the nascent AI market, thereby adversely affecting market competition. However, the UK CMA decision shows that, at least in the UK market, this deal is not seen as having significant anti-competitive risks.