Andrew Forman, deputy assistant attorney general for antitrust, stated at a Washington D.C. conference that the U.S. Department of Justice is closely monitoring AI competitors with shared board members. “That’s something we’re particularly focused on,” Forman said. As the private sector embarks on its AI arms race, maintaining competition is the utmost priority for federal regulators. However, start-ups and companies sharing board members present opportunities for collusion or conflicts of interest that can slow innovation and disenfranchise workers, shareholders and consumers.

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AI investing is already extraordinarily top-heavy; Google (GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Amazon (AMZN) make up two-thirds of all venture capital invested in generative AI start-ups in 2023. As nearly every major tech company has entered an AI hiring frenzy to woo the world’s best thinkers while developing and innovating their own new AI product verticals, Big Tech companies could compete directly with the start-ups they invest in. Or, worse, the overlapping presence of board members across multiple companies may create incentives to avoid competition in certain product domains or in hiring specific AI engineers. Such behavior, resembling collusion, could potentially be interpreted as monopolistic conduct.

Microsoft has positioned itself as a........

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