Amazon.com is making a bold move in the artificial intelligence arms race, announcing it will invest up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic – the maker of the Claude AI assistant.
The deal, unveiled Monday, will give Amazon a minority stake in Anthropic and make Amazon Web Services (AWS) the primary cloud provider for Anthropic’s cutting-edge AI models. It’s Amazon’s biggest counterpunch yet to rivals Microsoft and Google in the quest to dominate cloud-based AI.
Under the partnership, Anthropic has agreed to train and deploy its future AI systems using AWS infrastructure and custom chips. In fact, Anthropic will work on optimizing its models for Amazon’s in-house semiconductor hardware, including the Trainium and Inferentia chips designed for AI.
“This will help make Anthropic’s models better, and will help make our chip technology and AI infrastructure better,” said Adam Selipsky, CEO of AWS, about the collaboration.
Amazon’s cloud customers and employees will also gain early access to new features from Anthropic’s AI, which they can integrate into their own applications. For example, businesses using AWS’s Bedrock AI service will be able to deploy Claude and even customize the AI with their proprietary data.
Amazon promises that “for many years to come, future versions of Claude will be available on Amazon Bedrock”, securing a long-term supply of Anthropic’s AI innovation for AWS clients.
This alliance intensifies the competition among tech giants to secure ties with leading AI labs. Microsoft set the tone by pouring billions into OpenAI (creator of ChatGPT) and exclusively offering OpenAI’s models via Azure.
Google, for its part, invested $400 million in Anthropic earlier in 2023 and provides computing power for Anthropic’s research.
(Anthropic confirmed it will continue that Google Cloud relationship even as it embraces Amazon’s platform.) Now Amazon is upping the ante, ensuring it won’t be left without a top-tier AI partner.
Industry watchers see the move as crucial for AWS to attract AI-heavy workloads; Amazon had lagged somewhat as Microsoft and Google flaunted their AI offerings.
For Anthropic, which was founded by former OpenAI executives, Amazon’s cash infusion provides resources to train ever-more powerful models – while allowing the startup to “prioritize safety” in development, according to CEO Dario Amodei.
Anthropic has been valued at roughly $4–5 billion prior to this deal; with Amazon’s investment, its valuation and war chest have surged.
By late 2024, Amazon had followed through to invest a full $4 billion (and more) in Anthropic, bringing its total stake to $8 billion. The funds will support Anthropic’s ambitious roadmap for Claude and future models that could rival OpenAI’s most advanced systems.
The partnership is already yielding real-world integrations. Claude 2, Anthropic’s flagship model, became available to AWS customers through Amazon Bedrock shortly after launch.
Early enterprise users include LexisNexis, which is working with Anthropic and Amazon to build an AI-powered legal research assistant, and the hedge fund Bridgewater Associates, which is exploring Claude for data analysis.
These collaborations hint at how Amazon intends to leverage Anthropic’s tech across industries via its cloud.
Amazon notably will not get a board seat at Anthropic and remains a minority shareholder – a structure similar to Microsoft’s hands-off investment in OpenAI. This suggests Anthropic will retain independence in its research directions (important for its safety-focused mission) while enjoying the immense scale and distribution that Amazon offers.
For Amazon, the payoff is clear: integrating a reputable AI like Claude into AWS could attract AI startups and enterprise developers to its cloud instead of Azure or Google Cloud.
It’s a high-stakes bet that by combining Anthropic’s AI prowess with Amazon’s cloud empire, both can catch up to – or even leapfrog – the AI lead established by OpenAI and Microsoft.
The deal underscores how critical generative AI has become to Big Tech’s strategies. As ChatGPT and other AI systems transform how people interact with technology, Amazon wasn’t about to be left on the sidelines.
With Anthropic’s Claude joining the fold (and even a possibility of future integration with Amazon’s consumer products like Alexa down the line), the e-commerce and cloud giant has signaled it’s determined to compete aggressively in AI – with safety and scalability as key differentiators.
Amazon’s investment, one of the largest in the AI startup space to date, effectively buys it a ticket to the forefront of AI innovation alongside its rivals in Redmond and Mountain View.