Amazon announced on Wednesday its plans to inject an additional $2.75 billion into Anthropic, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence startup, bringing its total investment in the company to $4 billion.
This move solidifies Amazon’s commitment to Anthropic, positioning the technology giant with a minority stake in the AI firm, which competes directly with OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Data and AI at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud-computing arm, expressed enthusiasm for the collaboration, highlighting the potential of generative AI as a transformative technology. Sivasubramanian emphasized that the strategic partnership with Anthropic aims to enhance customer experiences and drive future innovations.
Amazon initially invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic back in September, signaling its intention to invest up to $4 billion in the startup.
The collaboration between Amazon and Anthropic focuses on developing foundation models, which serve as the backbone for generative AI systems gaining widespread attention worldwide.
As part of the agreement, Anthropic will leverage AWS as its primary cloud provider, utilizing Amazon’s specialized chips to build, train, and deploy AI models. Additionally, Anthropic will grant AWS customers, predominantly businesses, access to its models through Amazon’s Bedrock service. Companies like Delta Air Lines and Siemens have already leveraged Bedrock to harness Anthropic’s AI models.
This substantial investment underscores the trend of major tech companies pouring funds into AI startups amid growing interest from both the public and businesses. However, these investments have drawn scrutiny from US antitrust regulators earlier this year, signaling increased oversight in the AI investment landscape.