Amazon deepens AI push with additional $4 billion in OpenAI challenger Anthropic: All about the deal

Amazon is set to invest a further $4 billion in Anthropic, a San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) startup, as major technology firms continue to vie for dominance in the generative AI sector.

This latest investment will bring Amazon’s total funding in Anthropic, which began last year, to $8 billion. Despite the substantial financial backing, Anthropic has clarified that Amazon will retain its position as a minority investor. The startup was founded by former leaders of OpenAI, the organisation behind ChatGPT, and has quickly become a key player in the AI industry.

Under the agreement, Anthropic will designate Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its principal training partner for developing its foundational AI models—highly advanced systems that power general-purpose AI applications such as ChatGPT and Google Bard. Additionally, Anthropic will rely on AWS’s cutting-edge chips to train and deploy its future models.

Matt Garman, CEO of AWS, expressed enthusiasm for the collaboration, stating, “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.”

As per AP, the partnership comes amidst heightened regulatory scrutiny of relationships between large technology companies and emerging AI firms.

However, Amazon recently received a favourable decision from the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), which determined that Anthropic's revenue and its combined market share with Amazon in the UK were insufficient to warrant a more extensive investigation under merger regulations.

(With inputs from AP)