Amazon is pouring another $2.75 billion into Anthropic, bringing its total investment in the AI startup to $4 billion.
KEY FACTS
- Amazon will retain a minority stake in San Francisco-based Anthropic, which competes with ChatGPT owner OpenAI with its Claude chatbot.
- Amazon will not have representatives on Anthropic’s board, the company said.
- The deal was struck at the AI startup’s latest valuation, which a CNBC source said was $18.4 billion.
- Under the deal, Anthropic will use Amazon Web Services (AWS) , Amazon’s cloud computing subsidiary, as its «primary» cloud service provider and use Amazon’s custom chips to build, train and deploy AI models.
IMPORTANT QUOTE
“Generative artificial intelligence is poised to become the most transformative technology of our time, and we believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further enhance our services to our customers. We look forward to what’s next,» said Swami Sivasubramanian, AWS Vice President.
KEY STORY
The news of Amazon’s investment comes a few weeks after Anthropic debuted Claude 3, which it claims is the fastest and most powerful AI tool yet. The company said the most powerful of its new models is better than OpenAI and Google’s GPT-4.
The company’s product competes directly with OpenAI’s ChatGPT in both the enterprise and consumer worlds, and was founded by former OpenAI executives and employees.
In the past year, Anthropic closed five different deals worth about $7.3 billion.
Seattle-based tech giant Amazon made an initial investment of $1.25 billion in Anthropic in September and indicated back then that it had plans to invest up to $4 billion in the startup.
The two companies are collaborating to develop models that step on generative artificial intelligence—the main battleground of the AI field.
More and more large companies are investing in AI startups amid huge interest in the technology. AWS donated $1 million to the INSAIT Institute, founded by Prof. Martin Vechev, at the end of last year.
