Amazon Increases Big Bet on AI Startup

It now has $4B stake in Anthropic
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 27, 2024 4:08 PM CDT
Amazon Adds to Huge Investment in AI Startup
According to Pitchbook, more that $29 billion was invested in nearly 700 AI deals last year.   (Getty Images/gorodenkoff)

Claude just got a lot more money from Amazon. The company has invested another $2.75 billion in artificial-intelligence startup Anthropic, bringing its total stake in a deal announced six months ago to $4 billion. The startup's model Claude competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT, NBC News reports. Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI researchers, announced its Claude 3 models earlier this month, saying they can "power live customer chats, auto-completions, and data extraction tasks where responses must be immediate and in real-time." The deal dwarfs Amazon's previous biggest bet on a venture, a $1.3 billion investment in electric vehicle maker Rivian.

Anthropic, which is also backed by companies including Google and Salesforce, has now secured outside investment of more than $10 billion. Amazon is the biggest investor, but it says it won't have a board seat. The investment shows the "enormous resources that tech companies are pouring into AI," and how much Anthropic needs to stay competitive in the AI race, the New York Times reports. The Times notes that another Anthropic investor, bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, has been granted approval to sell its 8% stake.

Since the beginning of the partnership, "I've been inspired by their team's vision for transforming customer experiences with the most advanced generative AI technologies," Amazon Web Services exec Swami Sivasubramanian said in a post on X. As part of the agreement, Anthropic will use AWS as its "primary cloud provider for mission critical workloads, including safety research and future foundation model development," according to a company blog post.
(More Anthropic stories.)

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