Amazon Met With Startups About Investing, Then Launched Competing Products

Inc.'s venture-capital fund invested in DefinedCrowd Corp., it gained access to the technology startup's finances and other confidential information. Nearly four years later, in April, Amazon's cloud-computing unit launched an artificial-intelligence product that does almost exactly what DefinedCrowd does, said DefinedCrowd founder and Chief Executive Daniela Braga.