Amazon said Monday it would invest up to $4 billion in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, as the world’s biggest technology companies race to benefit from advances in artificial intelligence that could reshape parts of their businesses and the economy in his set.
Amazon is trying to keep pace with rivals such as Microsoft and Google, which have invested billions of dollars each in ai research. Anthropic, considered one of the most promising of a group of ai startups, will use Amazon’s data centers, cloud computing platform and ai chips.
tech giants have partnered with new ai startups by providing them with computing power and cash to help them develop new models and applications. Google has also invested in Anthropic, while Microsoft backed OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.
Amazon’s investment of up to $4 billion would give it a minority stake in Anthropic, he said.
Like OpenAI, Anthropic is a developer of so-called generative ai, the technology capable of learning from large amounts of data to create human-like text and images. These tools are considered to have the potential to automate many tasks, reshaping aspects of the global economy.
Anthropic, which operates a chatbot called Claude, has sought to position itself as one of the most responsible players in the industry. His executives have warned that ai could cause tremendous harm to society if it is not developed carefully. The company’s co-founder, Jack Clark, attended a recent meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss ai policy, including the risks and potential of this rapidly evolving technology.
Partnering with Anthropic is a win for Amazon, which competes against Microsoft and Google in cloud computing and has been trying to establish itself deeper in ai. Amazon is also battling Nvidia as a supplier of the chips needed to run complex ai systems.
The enormous amounts of money and computing power required to run ai models have made it nearly impossible for smaller companies to remain independent from established tech giants with deep pockets. However, while Microsoft has backed OpenAI and Google has partnered with companies like Cohere, Amazon hasn’t been as active in the field until its deal with Anthropic.
“We can help improve many customer experiences, in the short and long term, through our deeper collaboration,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon, in a ai” title=”” rel=”noopener noreferrer” target=”_blank”>statement.
