Amazon Plans to Invest Up to $25 Billion in Anthropic
Amazon has agreed to invest as much as $25 billion more in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence start-up that created the Claude chatbot, the companies said on Monday, the latest in a series of massive deals between tech giants and A.I. start-ups.
Amazon, which previously invested $8 billion in Anthropic, is already one of the start-up’s largest investors. In the latest deal, Amazon plans to invest $5 billion to start, with the potential to add another $20 billion if Anthropic hits certain milestones.
Anthropic, in turn, committed to spend $100 billion on computing power and other services from Amazon’s cloud computing business over the next decade. The start-up will also continue to use specialized computer chips that Amazon has designed as an alternative to high-priced chips from Nvidia, the Silicon Valley chipmaker that dominates the A.I. market.
The largest tech companies are continuing to pour billions of dollars into A.I. despite worries by some investors that the costs are too high. Over the past few years, spending on A.I. has climbed to record heights, raising questions about whether the boom can be sustained.
The agreements between Amazon and Anthropic are also the latest example of the circular deal making at the heart of the A.I. surge. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia have invested huge sums in companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. In exchange, these start-ups purchase massive amounts of computing power from the same investors.
Amazon and Anthropic are betting that they can deliver leading A.I. technologies using alternatives to Nvidia’s powerful but expensive chips. Over the past year, Anthropic has become one of the largest users of Amazon’s latest chip, known as Trainium.