Amazon invests an additional $2.75 billion in AI startup Anthropic

The additional funding will increase the technology giant’s total investment in the OpenAI rival to $4 billion

On Wednesday, Amazon announced that it would invest an additional $2.75 billion in Anthropic, bringing its total investment in the artificial intelligence startup to $4 billion. The technology giant will retain a minority stake in San Francisco-based Anthropic, which is a competitor of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of data and AI at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud-computing subsidiary, stated, “Generative AI is poised to be the most transformational technology of our time, and we believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further improve our customers’ experiences, and look forward to what’s next.”

Amazon, based in Seattle, initially invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic in September and indicated at that time that it planned to invest up to $4 billion.

The two companies are working together to create foundation models, which are the basis for the generative AI systems that have garnered worldwide interest.

As part of the agreement, Anthropic will utilize AWS as its main cloud provider and leverage Amazon’s custom chips for developing, training, and deploying AI models.

The investment is part of a broader trend where major tech companies are investing in AI startups, reflecting increasing interest from both the public and businesses in AI technology. Earlier this year, US antitrust regulators announced they were scrutinizing these investments.