Amazon to invest an additional $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic

Amazon is investing an additional $4 billion in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic as major technology companies rush to fund generative AI.

This will bring Amazon’s total investment in Anthropic — which began last year — to $8 billion. Anthropic said the Seattle-based tech giant will maintain its position as a minority investor in the startup, which was founded by former leaders of the Microsoft-linked OpenAI.

Under the deal, Amazon said the San Francisco-based Anthropic will now name Amazon’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, as its “primary training partner.” It will also use two AWS chips to train and deploy its future foundational models, the advanced systems that underpin general-purpose AI services like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot.

“We’ve been impressed by Anthropic’s pace of innovation and commitment to responsible development of generative AI, and look forward to deepening our collaboration,” Matt Garman, the AWS CEO, said in a statement included in Amazon’s announcement.

The relationship between Big Tech companies and AI startups has received scrutiny from regulators in the U.S. and abroad. However, Amazon got some good news in September when Britain’s competition watchdog said Anthropic’s revenue and its combined market share with Amazon in Britain were not big enough to require an in-depth investigation under the country’s merger rules.