Amazon.com has invested an additional $4 billion into Anthropic, a rival to OpenAI, as the eCommerce giant competes with other Big Tech companies in the race to harness the potential of generative artificial intelligence (AI).
The startup said in a statement that this doubles Amazon’s investment in the firm known for its GenAI chatbot Claude, but it remains a minority investor.
Like Amazon’s previous $4 billion investment, it comes in the form of convertible notes and comes in phases, first at $1.3 billion.
Anthropic is also in talks with additional investors to raise more capital on the back of Amazon backing, sources added, who requested anonymity for discussing private matters. Anthropic declined to comment.
Amazon, which has steadily become Anthropic’s main cloud partner, is actively competing with Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google to provide AI-driven tools to its cloud clients. AWS is playing a key role in driving substantial revenue for Anthropic as a major distributor of its latest models.
“The investment in Anthropic is essential for Amazon to stay in a leadership position in AI,” said D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria.
The eCommerce company’s increased investment in Anthropic underscores the billions of dollars funneled into AI startups over the past year, as investors look to cash in on a boom in the technology, which became popular with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022.
Further, Anthropic intends to train and deploy its foundational models using Amazon’s Trainium and Inferentia chips. Given the resource-intensive nature of AI model training, securing high-performance, costly AI chips has become a top priority for startups in the field, as per the statement.
