SAN FRANCISCO, NOV 24 – Amazon will invest an additional US$4 billion in artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic, as major tech companies race to fund generative AI.
The investment will bring Amazon’s total investment in Anthropic, which began last year, to US$8 billion.
Anthropic noted that the Seattle-based tech giant will remain a minority investor in the startup founded by a former Microsoft-linked OpenAI leader.
Under the agreement, Amazon stated that Anthropic, based in San Francisco, will now name Amazon’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services (AWS), as their ‘primary training partner’.
Anthropic will also use two AWS chips to train and power its future foundational models, which are advanced systems that form the basis of general-purpose AI services such as ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot.
“We are impressed by the speed of Anthropic’s innovation and their commitment to the responsible development of generative AI, and we look forward to strengthening this collaboration,” AWS CEO Matt Garman said in a statement accompanying Amazon’s announcement.
The relationship between big tech companies and AI startups has drawn the attention of regulators in the US and abroad.
However, Amazon received good news last September when Britain’s competition watchdog said Anthropic’s revenue and combined market share with Amazon’s in Britain were not large enough to warrant an in-depth investigation under the country’s merger rules. – AP
