The investment is part of a wider spending trend among cloud providers to stay competitive in the AI race. Anthropic will use Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider and Amazon chips to train, build, and deploy its foundation models. Other tech giants, including Microsoft and Google, have also made significant investments in AI startups. However, these investments have come under scrutiny from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission for their potentially circular nature, with accusations of tech giants funneling cash back to their cloud businesses.
Key takeaways:
- Amazon is investing $2.75 billion in Anthropic, a leading startup in generative artificial intelligence, marking its largest outside investment in its history.
- Anthropic's AI models, including its chatbot Claude, compete directly with OpenAI's ChatGPT and have reportedly outperformed OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini Ultra in industry benchmark tests.
- As part of the agreement, Anthropic will use Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud provider and Amazon chips to train, build and deploy its foundation models.
- The U.S. Federal Trade Commission is scrutinizing these types of partnerships between tech giants and AI startups, including Amazon's investment in Anthropic, for potential 'round tripping' which can be illegal if it's intended to mislead investors.