Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will be increasing its investment in Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup based in San Francisco, by an additional $2.75 billion.
This brings Amazon’s total investment in Anthropic to $4 billion, while the tech giant will maintain a minority stake in the company. Anthropic is considered a competitor to OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
Swami Sivasubramanian, the vice-president of data and AI at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud-computing subsidiary, emphasized the potential of generative AI to be a transformative technology. He stated that the collaboration with Anthropic will further enhance customer experiences, indicating excitement for future developments.
Amazon’s initial investment in Anthropic was $1.25 billion in September, with plans to invest up to $4 billion. The collaboration between the two companies focuses on developing foundation models, which are fundamental to generative AI systems.
Anthropic will utilize AWS as its primary cloud provider and leverage Amazon’s custom chips for building, training, and deploying AI models. Additionally, Anthropic’s AI models will be accessible to AWS customers through an Amazon service called Bedrock, with companies like Delta Air Lines and Siemens already utilizing Bedrock to access Anthropic’s AI models.
This investment reflects the ongoing trend of major tech companies investing in artificial intelligence startups, driven by increasing interest from both the public and businesses in AI technology. However, these investments have drawn scrutiny from US antitrust regulators, who announced earlier this year that they are reviewing such investments.