UK competition watchdog clears Microsoft’s hiring of AI startup’s core staff

British regulators on Wednesday cleared Microsoft’s hiring of key staff from startup Inflection AI, saying the deal wouldn’t stifle competition in the country’s artificial intelligence market.

The Competition and Markets Authority had opened a preliminary investigation in July into Microsoft’s recruitment of Inflection’s core team, including co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, chief scientist Karen Simonyan and several top engineers and researchers.