Amazon to Invest up to $4 Billion in AI Firm Anthropic

The race for supremacy in artificial intelligence is heating up.

Amazon today announced a multi-billion-dollar strategic investment in Anthropic, the AI company that launched the chatbot Claude 2.

The e-commerce platform will first inject $1.25 billion, retaining the option to escalate its investment up to as much as $4 billion.

The strategy positions Amazon to face off against its rivals like Microsoft, Meta, Google, and Nvidia in the burgeoning AI field.

On the Anthropic side, the company will not only benefit Amazon’s investment capacity but also gain access to Amazon Web Services’ computational power–an essential for developing AI models.

Notably, Microsoft has backed OpenAI with a similar collaboration of cash investment and letting the AI company tap its services.

Specifically, the AI firm will use AWS’ Trainium and Inferentia chips for its operations.

Trainium, AWS’s second-generation machine learning accelerator, is tailored for deep learning training, while Inferentia is crafted by AWS to deliver efficient and cost-effective machine learning inference in the cloud.

Both companies plan to jointly develop future Trainium and Inferentia technologies.

Offering Claude 2 to Amazon customers

Through the partnership, Amazon’s developers will gain access to Anthropic’s models on Amazon Bedrock.

This integration will let them enhance their projects with AI capabilities, improve existing tools, and craft novel customer experiences across Amazon’s diverse sectors.

Furthermore, AWS users will be able to tailor Claude, optimizing the model’s features for their needs.

Last July saw the debut of Anthropic’s Claude 2, positioning itself as a key competitor to ChatGPT. This month, Anthropic introduced Claude Pro, a premium ChatBot service.

In its statement, Anthropic insisted on safety, explaining it remains a paramount concern for both companies in AI deployment.

Amazon, recognized for its cloud security, strives to bolster safety measures on Amazon Bedrock. Collaboratively, the two entities align with groups like the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), Partnership on AI (PAI), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). They also endorsed the White House’s AI safety initiatives underlines.

Decrypt is awaiting a response from Amazon for further comments. Anthropic has chosen to reserve its statements to official press releases.