Amazon Invests $4 Billion in Anthropic, Becomes Primary Cloud Provider
Amazon has made a significant investment in Anthropic, an AI company and competitor to OpenAI. The e-commerce giant will invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, which will make Amazon Web Services (AWS) the primary cloud provider for the company. This partnership aims to make Anthropic’s safe and steerable AI widely accessible to AWS customers.
Anthropic, a San Francisco-based AI safety and research company, is known for its AI assistant named Claude. Amazon will gain a minority stake in the company, which has developed advanced AI models and customization features. Claude 2, its latest iteration, is designed to produce less harmful outputs and is easier to converse with compared to other foundation models.
As part of the collaboration, Anthropic will utilize AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips for training its AI foundation models. It will also leverage AWS as its primary cloud provider. AWS customers will have early access to Anthropic’s model customization features and fine-tuning capabilities. Additionally, Anthropic and Amazon will join forces using Amazon Bedrock, a service that builds generative AI applications.
Amazon’s investment in Anthropic comes after the company’s foray into AI technology. Earlier this year, Microsoft invested $13 billion in OpenAI, while Google invested more than $300 million in Anthropic. Initially, Amazon committed to investing $1.25 billion in Anthropic but has now increased its investment to $4 billion.
Anthropic recently raised $450 million in Series C funding, and this investment from Amazon will further support its mission of advancing AI safety and research. The collaboration with Amazon will enhance customer experiences and provide added value through the utilization of AWS’s foundation models and AI training chip.
Amazon has been actively integrating AI into its services, including AI-generated one-paragraph reviews to summarize product reviews. The company has also formed a dedicated AI team to drive advertising revenue. While the Alexa assistant is currently free, departing Amazon product executive Dave Limp suggested that advanced iterations of Alexa may come with a subscription fee in the future.
With this significant investment in Anthropic, Amazon is positioning itself as a key player in the AI industry. By partnering with leading AI companies, Amazon aims to enhance its AI capabilities and provide innovative solutions to its customers.
