Amazon announced on Wednesday that it is increasing its investment in Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup, by an additional $2.75 billion, bringing the total investment to $4 billion. The tech giant will maintain a minority stake in Anthropic, which is based in San Francisco and competes with OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
According to Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of data and AI at AWS, Amazon's cloud computing subsidiary, generative AI is expected to be a groundbreaking technology, and the collaboration with Anthropic is aimed at enhancing customer experiences.
Amazon's initial investment in Anthropic was $1.25 billion in September, with plans to invest up to $4 billion. The focus of the partnership between Amazon and Anthropic is on developing foundation models that serve as the basis for generative AI systems.
As part of the agreement, Anthropic will utilize AWS as its primary cloud provider and leverage Amazon's custom chips for building, training, and deploying AI models. Additionally, AWS customers, primarily businesses, will have access to Anthropic's AI models through an Amazon service called Bedrock. Notably, companies like Delta Air Lines and Siemens are already utilizing Bedrock to access Anthropic's AI models.
This investment by Amazon reflects the trend of major tech companies investing in artificial intelligence startups, driven by the increasing interest in AI technology from both the public and businesses. Earlier this year, U.S. antitrust regulators announced a review of such investments to ensure compliance with competition laws.
