Amazon and AI startup Anthropic have announced a partnership in which Amazon will invest up to $4 billion. This move is seen as Amazon’s attempt to compete with Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Nvidia in the rapidly growing AI sector, which many experts believe is the next frontier.
Initially, Amazon will invest $1.25 billion for a minority stake in Anthropic, which, like Google’s Bard and Microsoft-backed OpenAI, operates an AI-powered chatbot that analyzes text.
Additionally, Amazon has the option to increase its investment in Anthropic to a total of $4 billion.
Earlier this year, it was reported that Anthropic, with Google as an investor, plans to raise up to $5 billion in the next two years. They recently launched their premium subscription plan for chatbot Claude 2 and are now planning to develop a “frontier model” called “Claude-Next” that is 10 times more powerful than current AI technology.
However, this development will require a billion dollars in spending over the next 18 months.
In a new investment agreement, Amazon’s AWS will be used as the primary cloud provider for important tasks such as safety research and future model development. Anthropic will also utilize AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips for building, training, and deploying their future models.
In a statement, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy expressed confidence in the company’s collaboration with Anthropic, stating that it can enhance customer experiences in both the short and long term. Jassy specifically highlighted the excitement surrounding Amazon Bedrock, a new managed service by AWS that allows companies to build generative AI applications using various foundation models.
He also mentioned AWS Trainium, an AI training chip, and emphasized that the collaboration with Anthropic will help customers derive even more value from these capabilities.
Anthropic, which has backing from notable investors including Spark Capital, Salesforce, Sound Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Zoom, has raised a total of $2.7 billion so far. While the exact valuation of Anthropic in the new investment by Amazon was not disclosed, the startup was valued at approximately $5 billion in May 2022 after securing $450 million in funding.
Amazon has made a deal with Anthropic, a company that specializes in AI technology. This deal will allow Amazon to strengthen its position in the rapidly growing AI industry.
Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, believes that there are no barriers ahead for their key technology. He predicts that the advancements in the next few years will far surpass what we see today. As part of the deal, Anthropic will provide AWS customers with access to future generations of its foundation models through Amazon Bedrock, a fully managed service. They will also offer early access to unique features for model customization and fine-tuning. Anthropic stated that Amazon’s investment and supply of AWS Trainium and Inferentia technology will support their AI safety and research efforts. They are excited to work closely with Amazon to deliver safe AI cloud technologies worldwide.
