Amazon to invest £3.2 billion in Anthropic to fuel AI innovation

Amazon is set to invest £3.2 billion ($4 billion) in ChatGPT rival Anthropic.

The collaboration between the two companies will make Anthropic’s foundation models and generative AI widely accessible to AWS customers.

In an interview with Reuters, the CEOs of AWS and Anthropic said an immediate investment of of £1 billion ($1.25 billion) will be made. Either party can initiate an additional £2.25 billion ($2.75 billion) in funding from Amazon.

“By significantly expanding our partnership, we can unlock new possibilities for organisations of all sizes, as they deploy Anthropic’s safe, state-of-the-art AI systems together with AWS’s leading cloud technology,” said Dario Amodei, Co-Founder and CEO of Anthropic.

Amazon did not disclose specific details about its ownership stake in Anthropic or its updated valuation. Previously, estimates had valued Anthropic at over £3.2 billion ($4 billion).

Amazon said it will not take a seat on the board, with its stake being a minority position. However, Amazon’s employees and cloud customers will receive early access to Anthropic’s technology as part of the agreement.

Amazon developers and engineers can leverage Anthropic models through Amazon Bedrock to integrate generative AI capabilities into their projects.

“We have tremendous respect for Anthropic’s team and foundation models, and believe we can help improve many customer experiences, short and long-term, through our deeper collaboration,” said Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon.

AWS will become Anthropic’s primary cloud provider for mission critical workloads, including safety research and future foundation model development.

Anthropic will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to build, train, and deploy its future foundation models.

In August, Anthropic also received £78 million ($100 million) in funding from SK Telecom, one of the biggest mobile carriers in South Korea.

In May, the Financial Times also reported that Google invested in Anthropic’s £369 million fundraiser.

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