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Amazon has announced an additional investment of USD$4 billion in Anthropic, an artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executives.
The new funding increases Amazon’s total investment in Anthropic to USD$8 billion, although the tech giant will remain a minority stakeholder, as confirmed by Anthropic, which is based in San Francisco and is known for its Claude chatbot and AI models.
As part of this partnership, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will serve as Anthropic’s “primary cloud and training partner.” Anthropic will utilise AWS’s Trainium and Inferentia chips for training and deploying its advanced AI models.
The newly announced partnership will also grant AWS customers “early access” to a feature that allows them to fine-tune Anthropic’s Claude model using their own data. This offers a unique advantage for AWS clients, according to the company’s blog post.
Previously, Amazon made a significant investment of USD$2.75 billion in March 2024, marking the largest external investment in its history. The initial investment of USD$1.25 billion was announced in September 2023. Despite these substantial investments, Amazon does not hold a seat on Anthropic’s board.
This latest funding announcement follows Anthropic’s recent achievement of developing AI agents capable of performing complex tasks on computers similarly to humans. The new capability allows these AI models to interpret computer screens, select buttons, input text, navigate websites, and execute various tasks through different software applications and real-time internet browsing.
Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, noted that the technology can perform tasks involving “tens or even hundreds of steps,” and Amazon had early access to this tool. Early users included companies like Asana, Canva, and Notion.
In September 2024, Anthropic launched Claude Enterprise, its most notable product since the introduction of its chatbot. Earlier this year, it released Claude 3.5 Sonnet, a more powerful AI model, along with a “Team” plan for smaller businesses.
Last year, Google committed to investing USD$2 billion in Anthropic after acquiring a 10% stake in the startup alongside a substantial cloud services contract.