Amazon.com has made an additional investment of $4 billion in Anthropic, a competitor in the generative artificial intelligence space, highlighting its commitment to staying competitive against its Big Tech counterparts.
This latest infusion doubles Amazon’s stake in Anthropic, the company known for its AI chatbot Claude, but it will continue to hold a minority position, according to a statement released by Anthropic on Friday. The investment will be delivered in phases, beginning with an initial amount of $1.3 billion, similar to Amazon’s earlier funding round.
Sources familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, indicated that Anthropic is in discussions with other potential investors to secure additional funding, leveraging Amazon’s endorsement. Anthropic has opted not to provide further comments.
Amazon has increasingly positioned itself as Anthropic’s main cloud services partner, intensifying its competition with Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google in the race to provide advanced AI solutions for cloud clients. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is significantly contributing to Anthropic’s revenue as a key distributor of its latest AI models.
“Amazon’s investment in Anthropic is crucial for maintaining its leadership in the AI sector,” stated Gil Luria, an analyst at D.A. Davidson.
The increased funding towards Anthropic reflects a broader trend over the past year, wherein billions have been invested into AI startups, spurred by the rise in interest following OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.
In the previous month, Microsoft-backed OpenAI raised a staggering $6.6 billion from investors, potentially elevating its valuation to $157 billion and solidifying its status among the world’s most valuable private companies.
Anthropic is set to leverage Amazon’s Trainium and Inferentia chips for training and deploying its foundational models. The process of training AI models demands robust computing power, making the acquisition of costly AI chips a critical focus for startups in the industry.
“This partnership enables Amazon to showcase its AI services, particularly by utilizing its AI chips for model training and inference, which Anthropic is adopting,” Luria noted.
Nvidia currently leads the market for AI processors and considers Amazon among its numerous hyperscaler clients.
Meanwhile, Amazon is actively developing its own chip technologies through Annapurna Labs. Anthropic reported that it is “working closely with” this division to assist in the development of processors. Additionally, Amazon has been pursuing the creation of its own AI model, codenamed “Olympus,” although it has not yet been unveiled.
Co-founded by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei, Anthropic disclosed last year that it received a $500 million investment from Alphabet, with a commitment for an additional $1.5 billion over time.
The startup also incorporates Alphabet’s Google Cloud services in its operations.
© Thomson Reuters 2024
