Sept 4 (Reuters) - Britain's competition regulator, on

Wednesday, cleared Microsoft's ( MSFT ) hiring of some former

staff of Inflection AI and its partnership with the startup and

said the deal did not required a deeper investigation.

The Competition and Markets Authority began a probe in July

to examine if the deal might lead to competition concerns in the

country since both companies develop and supply consumer

chatbots.

The CMA said that even before being bought, Inflection had a

small portion of UK visits for chatbots and AI tools and, unlike

its rivals, couldn't significantly grow or maintain its chatbot

users.

In March, Microsoft ( MSFT ) hired Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of

Google DeepMind, as head of its newly-created AI unit.

It also hired a number of employees from Inflection, which he

set up in 2022.

Reuters reported that Microsoft ( MSFT ) had agreed to pay about $650

million as part of the deal, which gave it access to

Inflection's AI models and enabled the startup to reimburse its

investors, who include former Bill Gates and Google CEO Eric

Schmidt.