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.
The deal underscores the frenzy to be at the forefront of ai, a technology that has captured the public imagination and has the power to potentially transform the way people work and live. As part of that race, 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 has invested $13 billion in 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, recently attended a meeting on Capitol Hill to discuss ai policy, including the risks and potential of this rapidly evolving technology.
Working with Anthropic also helps Amazon, which competes with Microsoft and Google in cloud computing and has been trying to establish itself deeper in artificial intelligence. Amazon is also battling Nvidia as a supplier of the chips needed to run complex artificial intelligence 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.
Anthropic’s partnership with Amazon is also another example of a new type of circular business agreement that can be mutually beneficial for both cloud computing companies and ai startups.
Anthropic will pump much of the money it is raising from Amazon back into the company as it pays for time on the huge clusters of computer servers operated by the Seattle tech giant. So while Amazon makes a strategic investment in a new company, it is also fueling its own cloud computing business, which now accounts for more than 70 percent of its profits.
Microsoft first created this type of agreement with OpenAI in 2019. In recent months, other cloud computing companies, including Google and Oracle, have reached similar agreements with ambitious ai startups.
While Microsoft and Google have also launched their own online chatbots in the months since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, Amazon has not followed suit. Instead, it has worked to provide various tools to companies and independent developers looking to create their own chatbots and other artificial intelligence technologies.
In addition to increasing its cloud computing revenue, Amazon’s deal with Anthropic could raise its profile in the field and boost the development of new artificial intelligence technologies within the tech giant.
“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.
