Anthropic, an artificial intelligence business started by former OpenAI research officials, will get an additional $4 billion from Amazon, the company revealed Friday.
According to Anthropic, the San Francisco-based business that created the Claude chatbot and AI model, the internet giant’s total investment now stands at $8 billion, with Amazon continuing to hold a minority stake.
According to a blog post, Amazon Web Services will also take over as Anthropic’s main cloud and training partner. Anthropic will now train and implement its biggest AI models using AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips.
Claude, a chatbot developed by Anthropic, has become quite popular, much like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Together with IT behemoths like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, startups like Anthropic and OpenAI are engaged in a generative AI arms race to stay ahead of an industry expected to generate over $1 trillion in revenue in the next ten years.
Some companies, like as Microsoft and Amazon, are developing their own generative AI in addition to making significant investments in generative AI startups.
Through the cooperation announced on Friday, AWS users will also get early access to an Anthropic feature: the option to fine-tune their own data on Anthropic’s Claude. According to an AWS blog post, it’s a special perk for users.
Amazon made its biggest outside investment in its three-decade history in March when it invested $2.75 billion in Anthropic. In September 2023, the firms announced their first investment of $1.25 billion.
Amazon is not represented on the board of Anthropic.
One month after Anthropic revealed a major milestone for the company—AI agents that can use a computer to do complex tasks like a human would—the news of Amazon’s fresh investment was released.
As one of its two newest AI models, Anthropic’s new Computer Use capacity enables its tech to use any software and browse the internet in real time, as well as to read what’s on a computer screen, pick buttons, enter text, and traverse websites.
In an interview with CNBC last month, Anthropic’s chief science officer, Jared Kaplan, stated that the tool can use computers in a manner that is essentially identical to our own. He also added that the tool can complete jobs that require tens or even hundreds of steps.
According to what Anthropic told CNBC at the time, Amazon had early access to the technology, and Asana, Canva, and Notion were among the first users and beta testers. Kaplan said the company had been developing the technology since the beginning of this year.
Claude Enterprise, Anthropic’s largest new product since the launch of its chatbot, was released in September and is intended for companies wishing to use Anthropic’s AI. The business launched its more potent AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, in June. In May, it introduced its Team plan for smaller companies.
After previously announcing that it had acquired a 10% investment in the startup and a significant cloud contract between the two businesses, Google said last year that it would spend $2 billion in Anthropic.
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