The U.Okay.’s Competitors and Markets Authority (CMA) has confirmed that it’s assessing Amazon’s proposed acquisition of robotic vacuum maker iRobot.

The case remains to be at its earliest potential stage, the place the CMA is actually soliciting feedback from related stakeholders to determine whether or not there could also be a “substantial lessening of competitors” within the U.Okay. on account of Amazon shopping for iRobot.

The CMA hasn’t offered any particular timescales or deadlines for when it’ll announce whether or not to proceed with an official investigation.

Sensible residence

Based some 30 years in the past out of the Massachusetts Institute of Know-how (MIT), iRobot might be greatest recognized for its Roomba-branded autonomous vacuum cleaners, although it additionally presents tangential merchandise able to mopping flooring.

With Amazon’s gradual foray into the good residence, in addition to its personal dabblings in residence robotics together with integrations with Roombas, it wasn’t essentially an enormous shock that iRobot can be a tempting proposition for Amazon, which tabled a $1.7 billion for publicly-traded iRobot in August.  However in opposition to a backdrop of rising regulatory scrutiny in opposition to Massive Tech, it was little shock that the megabucks iRobot deal would finally draw the attentions of authorities across the globe.

Throughout the water in mainland Europe, EU regulators are reportedly making ready to analyze Amazon’s iRobot acquisition on privateness grounds, because of considerations over how Amazon would possibly mix knowledge from the 2 corporations to realize a aggressive benefit. In its home market, in the meantime, Amazon is already within the regulators’ crosshairs as a part of a multi-faceted investigation protecting acquisitions, competitors, privateness and extra. The Federal Commerce Fee (FTC) is at present mulling an official investigation into its iRobot deal, although notably the FTC did just lately greenlight Amazon’s $3.9 billion One Medical acquisition.

As for the U.Okay., it at present has a bunch of antitrust offers to take care of. Simply yesterday, regulator Ofcom revealed that it was making ready to refer the native cloud infrastructure marketplace for an in-depth investigation, with Amazon’s AWS and Microsoft particularly in-focus. Microsoft’s bumper $68.7 billion bid for Activision can be within the CMA’s line-of-sight, as is Broadcom’s deliberate $61 billion VMware acquisition. And a few 18 months in the past, the CMA ordered Fb father or mother Meta to sell-off Giphy, which it had purchased the earlier yr for $400 million.

So whereas at the moment’s information doesn’t essentially imply that Amazon’s iRobot deal is in peril, it’s clear that the U.Okay. has an urge for food for interrogating Massive Tech’s M&A endeavors. And with EU and U.S. regulators additionally eyeing up a possible in-depth investigation, it might not be overly shocking if the U.Okay. did determine to launch an official inquiry.

TechCrunch has reached out to Amazon for remark, and can replace right here after we hear again.